Le Chat Noir
by valkyriegirl
Summary: "Never mind that she'd been fixated on him for weeks.  This was a job, and a job meant not getting involved with the point man, no matter how impeccable his taste in three-piece-suits might be."  Picks up at the end of Inception.  Arthur/Ariadne.
1. Chapter 1: Au revoir

**A/N: **Inception is in no way my property. Spoilers for the end of the movie.

This picks up at the Los Angeles airport just as everyone gets off the plane.

The section title means "strings".

The chapter title means 'goodbye'.

* * *

**PART I: Les Ficelles**

**ARIADNE**

Ariadne drifted off the plane and down the gangway, following Arthur and Eames, dazed from Yusuf's sedative and jittery from the prolonged adrenaline rush—she felt both shaky and somewhat disoriented, like she couldn't quite catch up to the present. Everything felt surreal… dreamlike (her fingers twitched around the bishop in her pocket). In her head she kept reliving it all—the van, the hotel, the fortress, the beach and the city. Bits and snatches: her hands covered in blood as she helped dress Saito's wound; the texture and taste of Arthur's kiss; the chill of the snow; the feel of the gun against her palm; the look on Cobb's face as he cradled his dying wife in his arms. _Every time I close my eyes._ She had a feeling she wouldn't be sleeping for a long, long time, but she was filled with a strange euphoria that, despite everything that had gone wrong, _we pulled it off._

They funneled through and joined the queue at customs. Cobb looked tense—intense—intent. The customs officer hardly gave him a second glance and stamped his passport without batting an eye. From her vantage point one line over, Ariadne pretended not to see Arthur's reaction—a slight relaxation of the shoulders that indicated his relief—when Cobb passed through without a hitch, but she couldn't keep herself from grinning. _Some hardened criminal I am._ The customs officer beckoned impatiently, and it took her a moment to register the gesture before she ducked her head and produced her (forged) passport.

They all waited together, but not together, at the baggage claim. She'd been briefed on this, too. From here on out they didn't know her, and she didn't know them. They would all just disappear for a while, until some day, she hoped, they'd contact her again. One by one they collected their bags and headed toward customs. Yusuf inclined his head just the tiniest degree when he passed, and Eames gave her a full-on wink, but that was it. She caught a glimpse of Professor Miles in the crowd, and he and Cobb disappeared together. Fischer stood by the baggage claim, looking thoughtful (she stifled another grin). Arthur strode by with his poker face on and ignored her.

By the time she'd found her bag, her euphoria was wearing off with the realization that it was over—that she would have to go back to her normal life and pretend this had never happened. Wandering into the center of the airport, she dug into her bag for her flight itinerary—she had a connection to Chicago, then a flight to London, and finally a train home to Paris—something about covering their tracks. Even then, Arthur hadn't been happy that she was going directly (more or less) back to France. It would be better if she stayed in Los Angeles for a couple of days, played the tourist. But she desperately needed to catch up on school work. Lucky for her that Fischer senior had kicked the bucket near a school break, though she had a lot of catching up to do for Dr. Miles' class—he'd given her an incomplete at the end of the semester at Cobb's request so that she could focus on the job. The professor hadn't been happy about it, though, and had made her promise to make up the work by the end of the vacation, which was over in a little over a week. That meant she needed to go home and hit the books.

Having finally located the itinerary, she found her gate number, fixed it in her memory, and stuffed the paper back into her messenger bag. She needed to eat something, and get a cup of coffee, but whenever she traveled she like to find her gate first and then branch out from there. Unable to resist the urge to look around one more time, she couldn't spot any of her accomplices; extractor, point man, forger, and chemist had all dispersed, leaving the architect alone.

Something about that made her utterly, inexplicably sad (she slipped her hand into her pocket and gripped the bishop tightly).

_Clearly I'm a little hyperemotional_, she thought, and she tried to ignore it, writing it off to stress as she made her way down one of the wings and found her gate. But by the time she saw the sign with the gate number she was looking for, it was all she could do to tuck herself into a corner, ignore the strange looks people were giving her (_people, not projections_), and try to stifle the shuddering sobs that were attempting to burst from her chest. She watched her bishop topple on the linoleum, gripped it in her fist, hugged her knees, and rocked, completely perplexed at her own reaction. Things had gotten bad down there but they'd turned out okay. The job was finished, and everyone was fine. Cobb was going home to his kids, everybody had made a lot of money, and despite the odds nobody had wound up as a vegetable stuck permanently in limbo. Moreover, she'd known how this would end. It made sense that they should all go their separate ways. As Eames said, this wasn't a bloody tea party. It even made sense that she would miss them all, given that they'd spent weeks crammed together in a dingy warehouse. Her reaction was only natural. _It's just stress it's just stress it's just stress. _She wiped her cheeks impatiently, taking a short, huffy breath.

But when she pressed her cheek to her knees, what her stubborn mind flashed back to was the feel of Arthur's mouth against her own, and she bit her lip, closing her eyes—clearly, despite her best intentions, she'd gotten in way too deep.

She sat there, motionless, for at least ten minutes, trying to pull herself together. It was all kinds of ridiculous that she could go four levels deep, be shot at and almost killed (or sent into limbo) several times, and watch Cobb confront the murderous shade of his wife, to come out of it stuck on a brief little kiss that had happened in less than three dream seconds. Never mind that she'd been fixated on Arthur for weeks, whether or not she wanted to admit it to herself. This was a job, and a job meant not getting involved with the point man, no matter how impeccable his taste in three-piece-suits might be.

But when she opened her eyes again, she was shocked to find the point man walking purposefully toward her. Sitting up straighter, she blinked once, confused. She'd been briefed—_he'd_ briefed her, for Pete's sake, and now he was striding right toward her. She put the bishop on the linoleum and observed its customary topple. _Okay, this IS real. _Brushing the back of her hand over her cheekbone, she watched his approach, feeling a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Arthur paused just off her left shoulder and leaned toward her minutely, one hand in the left pocket of his exquisitely-tailored suit trousers. Feeling a little thrill of… something, she glanced up at him and tried to ignore the heat creeping into her cheeks. Raising her chin, she tried to parse his expression, groping for something to say. "So, it's done—just like that, huh?"

Arthur nodded once. "Just like that." He looked her over, and she knew he was taking in her red-rimmed eyes, her pallor, the totem in her fist and the hastily-ablated tear-tracks on her face. "How about we go get some coffee?" Ariadne was long past trying to predict his motivations—she was busy ignoring the huge swell of relief that washed over her at his words. She opted not to think too much about the implications of her reaction.

"Okay." He turned into the crowd and she stood and followed him to a coffee kiosk, where he paid cash for a mocha and a marionberry scone for her and an Americano for himself. They made their way to an empty row of seats against the wall and she tucked herself into one cross-legged, angled toward him slightly but focused on the soothingly-warm cup in her hand. Often she found it was a little blinding to look directly at Arthur for too long in one stretch. He sat stiffly in his chair, his Americano resting on one impeccably-dressed knee. Somewhat subdued from her own emotional rollercoaster, she was content to be patient and waited for him to speak. Clearly he hadn't broken his own rules just to buy her a cup of coffee.

"I'm going to travel back to Paris with you." He stated eventually, looking directly at her. He took a sip of his coffee. She glanced up from her mocha, trying and, as usual, failing to read his expression.

"But I thought you said that we were supposed to keep a low profile, travel alone—"

"I know what I said. Would you rather travel by yourself?" He'd fixed her with a scrutinizing stare.

"No." She dropped her chin to avoid his gaze and felt her face redden from the implications of… what? That she preferred his company to that of strangers? It was hardly a confession of undying love, but she was blushing nonetheless. _Quick, give me a kiss._

Arthur took another sip of his coffee. She ran her finger around the rim of her cup, trying to think. Her totem pressed tightly into her leg through her pocket. Arthur set his cup down again and cleared his throat, once.

"So that's settled." She found herself nodding without looking up. "You should eat." He pressed, and she nodded again.

When her scone had been reduced to crumbs, Arthur stood, tossed his cup in the trash, and waited while Ariadne brushed herself off and adjusted her bag. They made their way back to Ariadne's gate in silence, stopping once briefly for Arthur to purchase a current copy of _The Economist _ and _The Wall Street Journal_, which he tucked under one arm. The point man worked his magic with the woman at the airline counter—he really could be charming when he wanted to—and suddenly had a boarding pass with a seat assignment right next to Ariadne's. For Ariadne's part, she settled on a bench in the waiting area and buried herself in a textbook, opening it to a chapter on Antoni Gaudí, until they boarded half an hour later.

They settled themselves into their seats (Arthur graciously let her have the window seat), and both of them submerged themselves in their respective reading materials. It was an hour or two into the flight when Ariadne glanced up and caught him watching her read, his face inscrutable as always. That was the point when her patience ran out. "Why are you here, Arthur?" She asked him finally, watching his impassive expression. He met her eyes briefly.

"I'm here to make sure you get home safe." Ariadne sighed a little, frustrated and both mentally and emotionally exhausted.

"I can take care of myself." She told him. She figured that much should be apparent now after what had happened in the dream world. Hadn't she, as much as anyone, been responsible for their success? He blinked once and pressed his lips together without saying anything. She glanced down at her hands in her lap, suddenly feeling like she sounded ungrateful. His voice was in her ears: _It was worth a shot._ "Well, I'm glad you're here, anyway." She muttered, and she thought she saw him twitch one eyebrow, his expression lightening minutely before he turned away.

* * *

**A/N: **I fear I may have borrowed Eames' line about 'this not being a bloody tea party' from somewhere, but it's such a good line that I don't want to take it out. Kudos to whoever came up with that. The next chapter is on its way soon. Reviews are always appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2: Bon voyage

**A/N: **Thank you so much to all of you who added me to your favorite and alert lists, and reviewed! You made my weekend! :)

And, as always, my eternal gratitude to my friend piratesmiley, who betas everything I write and puts up with my neuroses and impatience. Check out her Arthur/Ariadne fic, 'Knockout'!

The chapter title means 'godspeed' or 'have a nice trip'.

**Warnings: **this is rated T for language and probably adult-ish themes.

* * *

**ARTHUR**

She'd taken him off guard. He'd known a few architects in his day and she blew them all out of the fucking water. But it wasn't just the raw talent; he'd known he was in trouble when she came back to the warehouse the second time—just as Cobb predicted—and told him, eyes glinting over a half-smile, _it's pure creation. _

_There's nothing quite like it, _he'd agreed, and he'd meant it. In explaining her own motivation, she'd struck upon the very reason _he_ kept coming back.

There was irony in the fact that being around her made him feel more awake than he had in years. At this stage in his career, the point man was rarely surprised—in fact, it was his job not to be—but there it was. She was cute. She was undeniably brilliant—there was always that, of course. She was honest and direct, sometimes brutally so, but she was also kind and insightful. He liked the way she was particular about the pencils she used, the exactness with which she worked. More often than he cared to admit he'd find himself watching her from across the room as she bent over a blueprint or a model, biting her lip in concentration, one pencil stuck behind her ear and another in her hand. Sometimes, when she thought she was alone in the warehouse, she'd hum to herself (once Arthur thought he recognized Louis Armstrong's _La Vie en Rose)_. Frequently she'd take the bishop out of her pocket and knock it over on the desk, studying the way it fell. Even when she didn't bring it out sometimes he could see the fist she made in her pocket as she clutched the totem. There was something endearing about that.

_Okay, so I have a crush. _

He acknowledged this in his traditional stoic manner, and refused to dwell on it. It had been a while since Arthur had been with a girl, and an even longer while since he'd had real feelings for one. He had decided early on that he just wouldn't get involved—it was messy and inconvenient and compromising; he couldn't fit it into any of the neat little compartments by which he organized his life. The point man could not afford to be so blinded. So he buried his feelings in professionalism and the demands of the job.

There was a reason that Eames called him the Tin Man.

But, in spite of what Eames might think, he wasn't completely hollow (heartless). He'd watched her sitting there in her neat gray suit, hair up in a bun, face tense and perfect lips pressed together, and he'd decided to indulge himself in light of the fact that either or both of them might never wake up. _Quick, give me a kiss. _At the time he'd wondered if he'd regret it.

He didn't.

He'd watched her wake up and stumble down the gangway at LAX, drifting. More than likely side effects from Yusuf's sedative—the PASIV was programmed to deliver the same dose of drugs to each of them, and therefore the dose she received was proportionally bigger for her petite frame than the rest of them. Yusuf had said it was safe, that it would just take a little longer to wear off, but apparently Yusuf had said—or chosen not to say—a lot of things. Fuck knows what she went through down there, anyway. He marveled at the way she was holding it together. After _his_ first extraction—things had gone south and he and Dom had spent hours being tortured by some of the most sadistic projections they'd ever encountered—he'd been a complete wreck. When they finally woke up, he'd chainsmoked his way through three packs of unfiltered Marlboros and downed two-thirds of a bottle of Jack Daniels before Eames escorted him to a less-than-respectable 'gentlemen's establishment' and he'd spent the rest of the evening in the company of a girl called Dixie. And that was why he'd given up smoking, he didn't drink whiskey anymore, and they never talked about April 17th.

So he felt like it was warranted that he'd been worried about Ariadne. And when he'd tailed her, quietly, across the airport terminal, well, it was the point man's job to make sure that everybody made it out and home safely. Arthur was all about the job.

When he saw her tuck herself into a corner and lose it, he'd hesitated. He knew she'd resent being treated like a rookie, but she might also appreciate the company. However, there were security concerns to think about—Fischer seeing them together could very well compromise the entire operation. Arthur hedged, one hand in the pocket of his trousers and the other on his briefcase, worried (justifiably) that the way he felt about her was clouding his judgment.

It was the way she held her totem—clutching it in her fist like a lifeline—that tipped him.

Now, sixteen hours later, they were on a train bound for Paris, Arthur (for once in his life) had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and Ariadne was trying desperately to avoid falling asleep. He watched her drink five cups of coffee over the course of an hour, turn her headphones up painfully loud (she listened to the Decemberists), bite her cheek so hard he could see her eyes watering, and stab herself in the leg repeatedly with her pencil, and yet by the time they were nearing Paris, she was periodically nodding off only to jump and gasp as the drop forward woke her up. It tugged at him, watching this. He'd seen it before—he could empathize—hell, he'd been there a hundred times himself. In the beginning he used to carry caffeine pills, but caffeine pills mixed with a job that tends to induce insomnia anyway, well… he'd hit a bad patch where he didn't sleep for weeks except on the job, and his projections got more and more unpredictable until Dom found out and made him quit (actually, Dom had made him quit and then forced enough sleeping pills down his throat that he'd woken up three days later in fucking Bermuda—Eames' idea of a practical joke. Arthur didn't take sleeping pills anymore, either, if he could help it).

He sighed and brushed an imaginary piece of lint off his slacks. Ariande nodded forward again, dozing, dropped her chin, and woke up with a gasp. She smoothed her hands over her face and swallowed before exhaling once forcefully. "Arthur," she said suddenly, her tone somewhat desperate, "tell me about Africa."

"Africa? Why do you think I've been to Africa?"

"Well, first, you and Cobb have been everywhere, and second, that's where Cobb went to find Eames, and Yusuf. Am I wrong?"

"No."

"So tell me about Africa." She pushed her hair back from her face and leaned toward him slightly in her seat, expectant. Arthur sat forward with his hands on his knees, cleared his throat, and resisted the urge to adjust his tie. It was always a bit disconcerting—and exhilarating—to have her full attention.

"Dom, Eames, and I were on a job in Kenya once a couple years back. The mark was the CEO of a prominent oil company that had claims in Nigeria. He was vacationing in Kenya, going on a big hunt at a game park south of Nairobi. We'd been hired to steal information about new oil fields they were planning on opening up off the Niger coast. Eames posed as a second-generation white Kenyan, sort of an Allan Quatermain-type with the big guns and the cigar. The job went off without a hitch—or so we thought—until we were kidnapped two days later in Mombasa by the guy's thugs and dropped out in the middle of the Great Rift Valley, near Lake Turkana. Desert, volcanic mostly. Eames had a nasty brush with a crocodile. It seems the CEO had suspicions that Eames had become involved with his daughter."

"Had he?"

"I don't think so. Eames can be an ass but he's not stupid. Dom was furious, though. Mal was waiting for him in Paris with Miles, five months pregnant with James."

"What did you do?"

"Dom just started walking. He kept repeating that he needed to get home to Mal and Philippa, and we followed him. You know how Dom is when he gets an idea in his head. Eventually we ran into a maasai tribesman who showed us to a town where we were able to hire a jeep and get back to Nairobi."

"Wow." Ariadne leaned back in her seat, looking at him with her eyebrows raised. "Makes me think if I'm going to stay in the business, I'd better acquire some wilderness skills." Arthur glanced up, a little more sharply than he'd intended.

"You're going to keep doing this, after everything that happened." He wasn't sure whether he wanted her to confirm that. A significant part of him—the unselfish part—wanted her to reply that she was going to finish her degree, get a nice job in a nice office, and stay the hell away from the extraction business. But he knew before she spoke what she would say. She ducked her head and licked her lips.

"Yeah… yeah, I think so." She nodded as she met his gaze. "That is, if you want me." He had to resist the urge to laugh.

"I'll let you know if something comes up."

* * *

**A/N:** Reviews are always appreciated! The next chapter is in the works. :)

I keep listening to Edith Piaf's _Non, Je ne regrette rien _on youtube and it makes me grin like an idiot every time. I think I'm going to set it as my alarm on my phone.


	3. Chapter 3: La Nourriture

**A/N:** Wow, thanks so much for all the feedback! Apparently Arthur was a hit, so there will definitely be more Arthur chapters in the future. But the next two chapters are Ariadne (it started as one chapter and then I got a little carried away). Hope you enjoy!

As always, reviews are much appreciated!

The chapter title means 'nourishment', or 'food'.

* * *

**ARIADNE**

As the train arrived in Paris, Arthur gallantly got her bag down and carried it off the train car for her. Not that she was into that kind of thing, but it was a nice gesture. She stumbled after him, focusing on following his dark, well-tailored suit jacket through the crowd. On the platform, he swung her bag over his shoulder and turned to face her, his expression inscrutable. She hadn't slept at all over the 17+ hours it had taken to get back to Paris, and that, in addition to the fact that the 10 hours of sleep they had gotten on the flight from Sydney had been anything but restful, had Ariadne weaving on her feet, shivering with exhaustion. Sleep, however, was the last thing on her mind (or rather, the first thing, but in light of what had happened, she didn't think she'd be able to sleep for a long, long time). Arthur gave her a deep, scrutinizing look that resulted in the quick ghost of a frown. But it was gone in an instant and he smoothed his face over, raising his chin slightly as he met her eyes again. He was hesitating, which was unlike him.

She supposed this was meant to be goodbye, but the idea of returning to her normal life repelled her. She wanted him to stay in Paris; she wanted to be around somebody who understood what had happened. There was a voice in the back of her head that whispered she had other reasons, too, for wanting him to stay—that there had been the _kiss_, in the middle of everything. The memory washed over her again, the feel of his lips against hers and the faint scent of his cologne and his warm breath on her face, and she felt her cheeks getting hot. She was trying not to read too much into the fact that he'd found her, afterward, followed her, gotten on the plane with her when they arrived in Los Angeles. _He probably just made some stupid promise to Cobb to see me home safe. Which, of course, is completely fine. I will deal with this like a professional, not a fourteen year old girl._ Squeezing her eyes shut, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, squared her shoulders and opened her eyes again to see him watching her, inclining his head. She observed him take in both her exhaustion and her resolve, and was a little surprised when the very corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny, understanding smile. "So, are you hungry?"

Relieved in spite of herself that he wasn't going to disappear just yet, she nodded. "I'm starving. Is it always like this?" He laughed, a short, sharp sound, and grinned briefly.

"Yeah, it is. So, a restaurant?" She hesitated, fruitlessly trying to read his expression, disliking the idea of being watched by a bunch of other people while she ate—she figured she'd had her fill of being scrutinized by strangers, be they projections or real, for a while. On the other hand, she didn't want to say the wrong thing. Arthur was being so… nice. "Or would you rather stop at a market?"

"That sounds better than a restaurant."

"Alright." Without further ado, he turned and headed off into the crowd, expecting her to follow. He was still carrying her bag, along with the PASIV and his own briefcase, and it made her feel a little self-conscious as she tailed him in the crowd. At one point she lost him behind a large man in a trench coat, and she scanned the station wildly, feeling a disproportionate flare of anxiety when she couldn't find him. After a few moments he reappeared at her right, wearing a benign expression as he waited for her to catch up.

Outside the station, he flagged down a cab and ushered her inside, directing the driver to take them to an address in Montmartre. The cabbie deposited them halfway up the hill, where they stopped at a corner market and Arthur bought a fresh baguette, a block of crumbly coastal cheddar, a couple of crisp fuji apples, two bars of dark chocolate, and a bottle of pinot noir. Refusing to relinquish her bag, he shouldered it, tucked the groceries under his arm, hefted his briefcase and the PASIV, and turned up the hill. Ariadne followed, slightly irritated at his continued display of misplaced chivalry as they tromped up the cobblestoned incline. He'd conceded to let her carry the wine and the baguette, but that was it—even with his arms full he wouldn't give her satchel back. She briefly entertained the idea of stopping him and insisting that he let her carry something else until she started to feel lightheaded and somewhat nauseous. She was shivering again, and attempted to hide it from Arthur, but she caught him watching her out of the corner of his eye more than once.

Just when she was beginning to consider asking him to pause so that she could catch her breath—and hopefully allow the nausea to subside somewhat—he rounded a little sidestreet and stopped in front of an art-nouveau-style apartment building. It took her a moment to recognize the implications of this—Arthur had a flat in Paris. Ariadne wasn't sure why this surprised her. Since Cobb had been so nomadic, preferring to stay in hotels, she supposed she'd assumed the others were that way, too. But the fact that Arthur had a flat, and that he hadn't let it go yet, was something. He somehow produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the door so that they could climb a flight of stairs. On the second floor he turned left and opened the door to apartment 3. Ariadne was still shivering and queasy with exhaustion but she found herself peering around his lithe, dark form, eager to see inside.

Arthur clearly hadn't been living in the flat for longer than a month or two: the length of the job (though "living" was perhaps a stretch of the term—the apartment had a distinct air of neglect about it). Ariadne had assumed he'd chosen Montmartre for all the tourist traffic and therefore its crowded anonymity, but when she peered out over the small balcony, looking down the hill and out over the rest of Paris, she had to admit it also may have been for the view. Quaint, lovely… in the evening it would be quite romantic. She shivered and folded her arms, pushing that particular thought from her mind. _Professional, remember?_


	4. Chapter 4: Le Sommeil

The chapter title means 'sleep'.

* * *

**ARIADNE**

Arthur put the grocery bag down in the little kitchen and poured a glass of water, which he brought over and pressed into her hand. "Drink it—you need it. I'm going to change." She nodded, set the bread and wine on the counter, took a sip of water, and turned back to close the front door behind her. When Arthur disappeared into the bedroom she produced the bishop and several times watched its lilt and tumble on the abandoned coffee table.

Satisfied, she returned its comforting weight to her right pocket and began to look around, her curiosity momentarily overriding her sheer exhaustion. The flat was furnished, well, the way she would expect Arthur to furnish a flat. Tasteful, sparse, neat. Perhaps a little dusty, but nothing out of place. An art-deco print hung on one wall in the living room, which held a leather sofa and two arm chairs that looked like they hadn't been touched since he'd bought them (which they probably hadn't). There was no TV. Wilted geraniums drooped in the window box. In fact, she had decided that the place was more like a neglected department store display than a living space when she discovered a bookshelf in the hallway stuffed with row after orderly row of dog-eared paperback volumes. She hadn't thought of Arthur as a reader—true, on the plane ride home he'd worked his way through _The Economist_ and the _Wall Street Journal_ before eventually producing _The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat_ by Oliver Sacks. But that was about brains and psychology and thus was vaguely linked to his work. At the warehouse, she'd never seen him read anything except the files he kept on the job.

Here it was another story. There didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to the editions in the collection. Most of them were classics but she recognized some new books, too—there was _The Iliad_ and _the Odyssey_, an edition of _Beowulf_, Dante's _Inferno_, Niche, Virginia Woolf, Conrads's _Heart of Darkness_, _The Stranger_, a couple volumes by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, _Brave New World_, _The Handmaid's Tale_, _Snow Falling on Cedars, Utopia_ by Sir Thomas More, _The Origin of Species_ by Charles Darwin, _Huckleberry Finn _by Mark Twain, and _The Road_ and _All the Pretty Horses_ by Cormac McCarthy. Stephen Ambrose, Carl Sagan, Diane Ackerman, and Jon Krakauer were tucked in next to biographies of John Lennon, Nelson Mandela, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Che Guevara. _Has he really read all of these since he's been here? _It was a little daunting to think that he'd amassed such a library in little more than a month. She supposed he didn't sleep much, but even in light of that, they'd been spending sixteen hour days at the warehouse. She ran her finger along the spines, trying not to be impressed (but she was). There were even a couple of science fiction novels—Asimov and the like. It was an eclectic and well-loved assemblage, and she couldn't shake the feeling of voyeurism—that she was invading something private.

But that had never stopped her before. When she reached up and drew out _The Hours_ by Michael Cunningham, a photograph fell from its pages onto the hardwood floor. Her curiosity piqued, she stooped to pick it up and paused as she realized it was a picture of Arthur, very young, and a pretty, dark-haired, middle-aged woman that she didn't recognize. _Of course you don't recognize her, _she scolded herself. _You hardly know Arthur, really. _But the thing was that she did feel she knew Arthur. As well as Cobb, Eames, and Yusuf. They'd been spending every possible minute at the warehouse for over a month, sharing dreams and thus their subconscious minds, as well as Indian takeout, the occasional laugh, and a penchant for complaining about Cobb's awful taste in music. She flipped the photograph over and read "_Arthur and Alice, Dec. 22__nd__, 1990"._ Examining the photograph one more time, she was noted the way Arthur and the woman, Alice, leaned into each other, smiling. It hadn't ever occurred to her that Arthur had family; somehow she'd gotten the distinct impression that he didn't. Of course this had been a long time ago—almost twenty years, and he was just a kid, but she was struck by the easy, open smile on Arthur's face. Who was the woman in the picture, and what had happened to Arthur since then to turn him into the stoic, suit-clad point man? She sighed and tucked the photo back into the book, replacing the volume on the shelf. If she ever saw Cobb or Eames again, she'd make a point of asking them.

Arthur emerged freshly changed into a starchy new white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black pinstriped slacks, and a straight black tie. She shook her head, imagining his closet filled with neat rows of button-up shirts, suit jackets, slacks, waistcoats, polished dress shoes, and ties—and nothing else. The man had probably never owned jeans in his life.

In the kitchen, he unpacked the groceries and uncorked the bottle of wine, putting it aside to breathe. As he washed the apples, setting them on the counter to dry, Ariadne drifted into the kitchen and hovered, watching him work. Next he produced a cutting board and a serrated knife. "Would you like some help?" Ariadne offered, leaning against the refrigerator. She'd finished her water and set the empty glass by the sink.

"No, I've got it." He'd thrown a dishtowel over one shoulder and was now slicing the bread quickly and stacking it on a plate. Ariadne liked watching him in the kitchen—he moved with the same efficiency and purpose with which he approached every other task. As Arthur started on the cheddar, Ariadne felt another wave of exhaustion wash over her, and she found herself sliding down the refrigerator door to sit at its base, leaning her head back against its cool white façade. Her boots squeaked on the tiled floor. She wrapped an arm around her knees and took a big breath, succumbing to the urge to close her eyes for a moment, so that she didn't see when Arthur glanced over his shoulder at her briefly. He put the cheese on another plate and moved on to the apples, and Ariadne opened her eyes again, struggling to stay awake, focusing on the backs of Arthur's black-clad legs.

Arthur made two trips from the kitchen to set plates of bread, apples, and cheese on the coffee table in the living room, and then returned to pour himself a glass of wine. "Would you like something to drink? There's this or some Perrier water in the fridge." She hadn't been intending to drink, but the idea of alcohol suddenly seemed pretty appealing.

"I think could use a drink, too. Wine, I mean." Ariadne stated from her vantage point on the floor. Arthur paused for a moment before getting down another glass and pouring for her.

"It's ready." He said, turning to go back into the living room. Ariadne leaned forward and started to stand but was struck by a sudden rush of dizzyness and had to stop moving as her head spun. When Arthur saw that she was struggling to get up, he set the glasses back down on the counter and bent to help her, cupping her elbow gently.

"Geez, Arthur, I'm fine—I guess I'm just really tired." She tried to wave him off but she wobbled a little and he didn't let go. Together they managed to get her into a standing position and she looked up at him, peering into his very serious face, imagining she saw a bit of concern etched there. Her dizziness ebbed but the moment stretched on without either breaking eye contact. Standing so close to him, she realized she could smell his subtle cologne. Dazed, she inhaled deeply, and memories of the kiss washed over her, raising goosebumps on her arms. At some point Ariadne realized Arthur was still holding her elbow, and the thought combined with the ghost of his kiss on her lips sent a tingle up her spine. She knew her cheeks were aflame. Arthur seemed to feel her shiver and released her expressionlessly, picked up the wine glasses, and headed for the living room.

She stumbled after him and collapsed into the leather sofa with a _whump _that made her head spin, feebly kicking off her boots. He bent and handed her the glass of wine—their hands brushed, gently, and she found herself trying to suppress another blush—before sitting down in one of the matching armchairs. It was dusk outside, the slanting light staining the sky a dusty pink. They munched in silence for several minutes before Ariadne couldn't stand it anymore.

"So, where do you think Eames will go now?" Arthur took a mouthful of wine and put his glass on the coffee table.

"Eames tends to favor the rougher cities. Cairo, Rio de Janiero, Moscow. Mexico city. He generally leans toward places with sun, though not always. I think he was planning to stay stateside for a week or two, maybe visit Vegas." He chuckled briefly, remembering something. "Eames hasn't been to Vegas for a while."

"Why not?" Arthur shifted in his seat slightly and leaned forward to pick up a piece of apple.

"That's something you need to ask Eames." He paused and laughed again. "But her name might start with Gennine." Ariadne laughed and took a sip of wine. She was starting to feel better now that she had something in her stomach, and the wine was spreading a comfortable warmth through her tired limbs.

"What about Yusuf?"

"Yusuf has a brother in Nairobi, but he won't go there directly. He's never been to the states." He picked up a piece of bread and took a bite. To Ariadne's surprise, most of the apples and cheese had disappeared already. She finished her glass of wine and settled further back into the sofa with her chocolate bar. The next question hovered in the air, waiting to be asked, but she hesitated. The sofa was really very comfortable and she drifted a bit, closing her eyes.

She was startled awake again by the sound of Arthur setting his glass on the table. Opening her leaden eyelids, she looked over at him through a sleepy haze and took in the shadows under his eyes, the tense way he sat. _So damn intense,_ she mused. _All the time._ He leaned back in his chair, watching her. She knew she'd regret it if she didn't at least ask him, even though she probably wasn't going to like the answer. Half-conscious, it took her a moment to focus enough to form the words.

"What about you, Arthur?" She mumbled, sleep laced in every syllable.

"Me? I'm not sure." She watched him knit his eyebrows together as he sat forward slightly, but then she lost the battle to keep her eyes open and missed the rest of whatever expressions he made (if he made any). The wine had been a bad idea. "There are a few loose ends I need to tie up."

"Oh. So you're leaving." More asleep than awake at this point, she said it mostly to herself, a little sadly. But she'd expected that.

"Maybe." He agreed. Silence stretched across the room between them. Ariadne sighed and shifted slightly on the sofa, nuzzling into the cushions, reluctantly succumbing the rest of herself to the dreamscape. Her last conscious thought was, _I hope I don't dream. _

She didn't hear it when he added, "Maybe not."


	5. Chapter 5: En fuite

**A/N: **I'm so glad everyone enjoyed the last chapter! Your reviews really do make my day, and I'm always up for constructive criticism. The next two chapters are going to be Arthur, as promised. :) Much, much gratitude to Piratesmiley, as always.

I'm really interested to hear what you think of this chapter. Thanks so much for reading!

The chapter title means 'on the run'.

* * *

**ARTHUR**

He carried her bag off the train. It was the least he could do—she had textbooks in it and she was so tired she was trembling. She stood on the station platform in front of him and tried to suppress it, but he could see her shaking. Really, he had every intention of finding her a cab and bidding her goodbye right there; it would have been the sensible thing to do. But as they stood together, he watched it dawn on her that he was intending to leave, and a look of distress flashed over her face so quickly he almost didn't catch it. She buried it under an expression of resolve, but for a moment she'd looked utterly miserable and what with that and the shaking he didn't feel like he could just abandon her there.

Arthur was feeling guilty. Guilty that he wasn't doing right by her, guilty that he wasn't doing right by the job (especially in light of his mistake on the Fischer operation—how in the _hell _had he missed that Fischer had been trained against extraction? Arthur _just didn't make mistakes_—that was what made him the best. He took a breath and consciously unclenched his fists. _Learn from it; move on._ Next time, he'd be even more thorough. It wouldn't happen again).

But with this—with Ariadne—this was a gray area, and even more difficult to dismiss. And aside from the fact that Arthur did not do well with gray areas, in this particular case he definitely didn't trust his own judgment. Unfortunately he didn't have too many other options. He knew what _he_ wanted, but it was exactly that which scared him. She shivered again, and he found himself smiling a tiny bit in empathy. At least she wasn't chainsmoking. Yet. _It's what Dom would have done,_ he thought, _get her fed, get her to bed…ahem. _Clearing his throat, he immediately buried the last thought. But it seemed at some point his mind had been made up. He ignored the voice in the back of his head that was chanting, _slippery slope, slippery slope._ "So, are you hungry?"

He didn't miss the look of relief that washed over her as she nodded, and he had to quash the impulse to smile again. But she didn't want to eat in a restaurant, and before he knew it they were climbing up _his_ hill on the way to _his_ apartment with a bag of groceries. What the fuck he'd been thinking when he'd decided to buy wine and dark chocolate, he'd never know, but now he could practically hear Eames' wolf-whistle in his ears.

On some level he had to admit that it was nice to be needed. Not that she _needed _him. Ariadne could take care of herself; she'd proven that already. But she could use a friend at the moment, and since Dom, Eames and Yusuf had stayed stateside, she was stuck with him. Granted, he felt vastly out of his depth, and that made him dually uncomfortable—in all honestly, he was unaccustomed to being anything more than a suit and a gun (and the voice of reason, in Dom's case, but that was no longer applicable). But as long as he was breaking the rules, he figured it was worth a shot (of course he knew where _that _line of reasoning had taken him. He was beginning to wonder if one of the side effects of Yusuf's sedative was that it made him act like Eames. He could just imagine the warning label—_CAUTION: side effects may include an inclination to womanize and generally behave like an asshat_).

They climbed the hill in silence, Arthur watching her out of the corner of his eye. It was clear that she was flagging, and by the time they reached the flat, she was looking pretty green, and Arthur was getting concerned. Was she just exhausted, or was it possible that she was reacting badly to Yusuf's sedative? They'd always tested the sedative on him, and once on Eames, but never on Ariadne and he felt a little thrill of anxiety as he wondered irrationally whether they'd inadvertently poisoned her. _Calm down, it was administered over 24 ago—she's just tired and probably suffering from a bit of shock._ As soon as he'd unlocked the door, he poured her a glass of water and then went into the bedroom to try to gather his wits. _Slippery slope slippery slope slippery slope. _After tossing his die on the nightstand a couple times (five, five, five), and a few seconds of pacing, he took a deep breath and then changed quickly, opting for a plain white shirt, black slacks, and a black tie. Simple, unsuggestive.

He still had no fucking idea what he was doing.

So he went into the kitchen and started putting food together, glad to have something to do with his hands. Ariadne sat on the floor behind him, dozing against the refrigerator. There was something… homey about being together in the kitchen, which was such a foreign thought that he actually stopped for a second and put the knife down, thinking. For the last few years, with the exception of the occasional visit to Dom and Mal's (and of course that had been before Mal's death), his definition of homey had comprised somewhere with a bed and a relatively low probability of getting shot. Of course, when he'd come to Paris he'd rented the apartment, but that was because it was going to take at least a month or two to get the Fischer job set up and he was goddamn sick of hotel rooms.

Apparently he was goddamn sick of a lot of things. The voice in the back of his head whispered that maybe, just maybe, he'd needed Ariadne here as much as she'd needed him. He took a breath, suddenly feeling unexpectedly and absolutely bone-tired, and started chopping again, if only to distract from his own unsettling self-insight. At one point he glanced over his shoulder at Ariadne, who was drooped against the fridge with her eyes closed, utterly exhausted.

She was worrying him and he wished he could do something more for her than feed her. But Arthur's forté was lists and numbers and details. He'd never been good at the emotional stuff—that had always been Dom's domain. Not for the first time, he found himself wishing fervently that Dom were here. Dom would have known what to do for Ariadne.

When he'd assembled something of a meal, he went to move to the living room and realized that Ariadne was so exhausted she could hardly stand. He bent down to help her up, carefully, and ignored her attempts to brush him off, made all the more ridiculous by the fact that she stumbled and would have fallen had he not caught her. They wound up standing on the kitchen tile about four inches apart, Arthur cradling her elbow in his palm as he looked her over to make sure she was only tired and not really sick. He finished his inventory, concluded that she was fine, and found himself just looking down at her, studying the angles and planes of her face, the warm brown tone of her eyes. As she stared up at him, he was struck by a fierce compulsion to pull her to him, to grip her waist a little too tightly and bury his face in her hair and kiss her as deeply as the other kiss had been simple and sweet. He stood there, frozen, absolutely perplexed at his own lack of emotional self-control, until he felt her shiver under his hand and dropped her elbow like he'd been burned.

He followed her into the living room and they ate in silence while Arthur berated himself and struggled to regain his composure. The food disappeared and Ariadne sank drowsily into the couch. He thought she'd already fallen asleep when she opened her eyes and looked over at him, silently. Arthur could see the question forming on her lips and he had no idea what he was going to tell her. He had to leave, of course. There was no other option. This, whatever this was, was dangerous. For both of them.

"What about you, Arthur?" She sounded like she was dreaming (he wondered if she knew she talked in her sleep). He gave her the automatic answer—the one he was supposed to give—the one that had nothing to do with the turmoil in his chest.

"Me? I'm not sure. There are a few loose ends I need to tie up."

"Oh. So you're leaving." She sounded sad, and that tugged at him.

"Maybe." The rush of sorrow that welled in him at that simple statement once again took him by surprise, and he looked at her from across the room, taking in her slight, weary form. Her hair was spread over the dark leather of the couch, copper and bronze in the light of the solitary lamp, curling in a way that made him want to tangle his hands into it. He heard himself add, "Maybe not."

Arthur realized she'd truly fallen asleep, and he shifted slightly in his chair. He had to admit it—at this point, he felt completely fucking out of control. He was the point man and the architect was sleeping on his sofa with no boots on—he had no protocol for this. Not to mention he himself had apparently gone completely batshit crazy over the last 24 hours. He downed the rest of his wine and sat stiffly with his hands balled into fists, willing himself to function at least marginally.

Eventually he managed to stand up and cross into the bedroom, pulling a quilt off the end of the bed, which he carried out to the living room and draped over Ariadne on the couch. She shifted underneath it, sighing. He stood there for several minutes, watching her sleep, unwilling or unable to name any of the feelings that were rising in his chest. Suddenly it was all just too much, and he turned on his heel, desperate to get away from her and the apartment and anything that made him ache like this.

He didn't leave a note. He didn't leave anything (that he was willing to name). He grabbed his coat, the PASIV, and his briefcase, and locked the door on Ariadne and everything that went with her.


	6. Chapter 6:  Non, je ne regrette rien

**A/N:** Hey everyone-I do so adore you all. You make me smile like an idiot when you add me to your favorites lists and write reviews for me. I'm pretty sure that every time a review is written, a tiny, magical unicorn is born. I'd bet there's a wikipedia page about it.

So this is a bit of Arthur backstory for you all. Constructive criticism is always appreciated! Everything is proofread by piratesmiley-I couldn't do this without her!

Slight side note: Arthur's walk made me think of the poem 'Acquainted with the Night' by Robert Frost. It's one of my faves. Go read it.

Also, when I was writing, I was listening to Mumford and Sons "Blank White Page". If you feel like looking that up.

The chapter title means 'No, I have no regrets.'

**Warnings:** profanity (I'm sorry-in my head, Arthur cusses when he thinks. That's just how it is.)

**Disclaimer:** Inception still doesn't belong to me. If it did, I would be off having dinner with Joseph Gordon-Levitt right now. The Wizard of Oz is also not my property. Neither is Edith Piaf, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Boo.

* * *

**ARTHUR**

He walked for hours down dark Parisian streets, relishing the rhythmic pounding of his feet on the pavement, the blisters from his designer shoes, the ache in his arms from carrying the PASIV and the suitcase. They all served to drown out his thoughts and fill his head with nothing, with crossing from streetlamp to streetlamp, plotting a course from one puddle of light to the next. _Just keep moving. _

As he paused at a street corner, a scantily-clad woman shimmied out of the shadows, eyeing his designer suit, and traced a manicured finger down his lapel. She was clutching a burning cigarette in her other hand. "Need some company tonight, mon ami?" The woman grinned suggestively. She was very pretty but Arthur shook her off impatiently and crossed the street without looking back. He'd passed the point where he could find refuge in that type of company.

His feet took him to the warehouse. He was almost surprised when he found himself at the door, the tarnished handle in his hand. But if he was honest with himself, he'd known it would come to this. Sighing, he unlocked the deadbolt, bringing in both PASIV and briefcase, before shutting and bolting it again. He put his suitcase on the floor by his workspace and, after removing it from its protective travel case, set the PASIV down on the desk. He stood and stared at the case for a long time, one hand on the lid, fingertips just touching the silver casing as he hesitated. He knew the risks. Eventually he exhaled, touched the totem in his pocket, flipped open the clasps, and dragged a lawn chair over. He shrugged off his jacket, hanging it carefully over the back of the chair. Then he set the timer on the PASIV and the alarm on his phone, sat down, and slipped the needle into his arm.

In his dream they were in a garden somewhere—Central Park or London, most likely, but it could have been other places. Probably it was an amalgam of several; places that she'd been happy. She was reading on a bench in the sun beside a lilac bush, but she stood when she saw him coming, opening her arms wide in welcome. She was tall and thin and elegant, and in his dreams her hair cascaded down her back in dark ringlets as it had before she had been robbed of that, along with so many other things. Her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled. "Arthur, darling!" She greeted him warmly in her crisp London accent, and put her arms around him as he bent to hug her. Pressing his face into her hair, he sighed as the familiar, comforting smell of her perfume washed over him. There was something about that, more than anything, that amplified the ever-present ache in his chest.

"Hi, mom." He whispered.

She took his hand and they sat down on the bench together, talking about the weather, her garden, the class she was teaching this term. They'd been reading _The Hours _in her book club, she said, by Michael Cunningham. "It's a fabulous modern take on Virgina Woolf. You know how I adore _Mrs. Dalloway_." These were things they had talked about before, a half-a-dozen times. He leaned into the sun-warmed wood of the bench and bathed himself in the lilt and rhythm of her voice.

"And how is school going?" She adjusted the scarf around her neck, looking inquisitive. He ducked his head, struck as he always was by the fact that even the projection of his mother could make him feel guilty.

"I didn't finish, mom, you know that. I took some time off, and then I had a lot of debt and needed some way to make money, fast."

"Oh. That's right." She cleared her throat softly and shifted in her seat. They watched a little girl chase a Scottish terrier across the lawn.

"I wish you'd go back, dear. You'd make such a brilliant lawyer."

"I _like_ what I do."

"But it's such a _dangerous_ business. And so nomadic. How are you ever supposed to meet a nice girl? Have you even dated since Sophia?"

"…Not really." Arthur sighed. Something about the turn of conversation made him want to kick his subconscious in the teeth. So much for escapism. But then his mother had always had a way of getting straight to the heart of the matter.

"You're going to have to let her go eventually, dear." She put a hand on Arthur's arm.

"It's not that. It's that I'd endanger myself and anyone I formed ties with. I can't afford to have normal relationships."

"Arthur." His mother fixed him with the penetrating stare that she'd used so effectively in life, but her brown eyes twinkled in the sunlight and she was smiling gently. "No man is an island. You're going to have to put down roots eventually." He nodded a little just to placate her and she squeezed his arm. The opening strains of _Non, Je Ne Regrette_ floated suddenly through the air. "Ah, I do so adore Edith Piaf. I imagine this means we're almost out of time." Arthur inclined his head in agreement. They stood and he hugged her again. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, her hands on his shoulders.

"I love you, darling. Take care of yourself, won't you?"

"Yeah, I know, mom. I love you, too." He stepped back, turning to leave, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Arthur, life is too short to spend it alone." She gave his arm a squeeze.

Arthur sat up abruptly, opening his eyes to the empty, darkened warehouse, pulling the needle out of his wrist. He snatched his phone off the desk and shut off the alarm, cutting Edith off mid-phrase. Then he set the phone back down and leaned forward in his seat, covering his face with his hands. He sat that way for several long minutes, taking deep, shuddering breaths. _Eight years. Eight goddamn years. And it never gets better._

She wasn't real. His mother was long dead, and he knew that. He hadn't dreamt of her in years—he'd seen what happened to Dom with Mal. He had a very realistic grasp of the situation and he didn't delude himself into thinking otherwise.

But sometimes, very occasionally, it helped.

Tonight he wasn't sure.

He lay back in the lawn chair and thought of her, allowing himself to remember for the first time in a long, long while. The way she read to him when he was small, how she'd cut his hair. She'd taught him to cook, to drive a stick, to play Scrabble. He smiled when he thought of the last New Year's Eve, of watching Monty Python and eating ice cream out of the bucket with two giant spoons and laughing until it hurt and they were gasping, slumped down on the sofa.

He thought about finding her in the bathroom when her hair first started to fall out, trying to hide that she'd been crying. Of sitting with her in the hospital during her treatments. Of feeding her red jello with a white plastic spoon until she couldn't even keep that down.

She died on a Thursday morning, and he remembered standing in the in hospital room, being extraordinarily angry because it was sunny outside and people were jogging and walking their dogs and taking their kids to school and that was just _wrong._ The last thing she'd said to him was _non je ne regrette rien._ It had been her favorite song.

But it had taken him years—until now—to understand what she'd really meant.

He thought of Dom. Of what Saito had said to him—_"Do you want to be an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?" _ At the time he'd thought it was a cheap emotional ploy, that Dom was an idiot for allowing himself to be manipulated, that they were _both _fools for getting involved.

But he, Arthur, was beginning to understand. He'd spent eight years living like a goddamned ghost (no wonder Eames had been known to herald his entrance with a reprise of _"If I Only Had a Heart")_. Now something had jolted him out of his stupor and he couldn't fucking deal. He was going to pieces. Enough so that even his fucking subconscious was lecturing him in the form of his mother. It had been so goddamned long since he'd allowed himself to _feel_ anything; he'd convinced himself years ago that feeling nothing was better than the constant ache of her absence.

But now there was an unexpected piece of him that relished feeling _something, anything_ at all. He shivered slightly and clenched his fist, processing.

As Eames continually insisted on pointing out, Arthur had no imagination—no spontaneity. He was as constant and reliable as the day was long (of course, Arthur could think of at least half-a-dozen instances where his reliability had saved Eames' and Dom's asses—for instance, the job with the circus dream and the elephant and the goddamn clowns; none of them had expected there to be so many fucking _clowns_—but somehow Eames never seemed to take that into consideration). Eames chose not to identify it for what it really was—that Arthur's complete lack of emotion was exactly what allowed him to be cool, logical, and reliable. In short, it was what made him so good at what he did.

Because Arthur _was_ the point man: the details, the suit, the gun. He _was _fucking consistency.

But he'd lost something in the transformation. At the time it had been something he'd been willing to lose, but now he wasn't so sure. He was tired of waking up in strange hotel rooms; he was tired of being surrounded by strangers. He was tired of feeling _nothing. _The idea of having something, someone to come back to was absolutely forbidden and suddenly the only thing he wanted.

_Non je ne regrette rien._

That was when he realized he couldn't leave Paris. Not tonight, not without saying goodbye.

He re-packed the PASIV, snatched up his briefcase, and threw on his coat, striding out of the warehouse with Edith Piaf singing in his head.


	7. Chapter 7: La Guérison

**A/N:** Hey all, it's like 5am where I am right now, so let that be my disclaimer. To everyone who added me to favorites or reviewed, **I adore you with the fire of a thousand suns!** I'm not really sure where this next chapter came from, but I like it. Hopefully, you will too! Whether you do or not, I will love you forever if you leave me a review. Seriously.

Piratesmiley is my beta. Yes, you should be jealous.

The chapter title means 'healing'. I'll go back and add translations of the other chapter titles.

**Warnings:** rather gnarly blisters. Just FYI in case you're squeamish.

* * *

**ARIADNE**

Ariadne woke in the middle of the night and knew without a doubt that Arthur was gone. Worried, she sat up and the blanket (blanket?) fell off of her in woolly folds. _The blanket must have been Arthur_ (she tried to quash the twinge of affection that rose at the thought). Outside, the cityscape of Paris was illuminated by a million pearls of light, but she didn't stop to look as she slid off the couch and padded past the kitchen in her socks, peering into the bedroom. The door was wide open, the bed still perfectly made, and there was no sign of Arthur anywhere. He was just _gone._

The thought brought a cold sense of loss and indignation—_he just left me here alone_—and she turned around and went back to the couch, sitting stiffly on the sofa cushions, trying and failing to force herself to breathe normally, to look at this logically. Surely there was a good reason. Surely he hadn't flown with her all the way from LA to disappear without even leaving a note. But she was hurt and there was no getting around it—she wasn't delusional, she didn't pretend that this stupid infatuation went equally both ways—but she'd thought that at the very least she'd meant more to him than _this_.

All of a sudden she was furious with Arthur, with all of them, and she sat rigidly on the sofa, fuming, fists curled at her side. She hated them for bringing her into this, for offering everything she could ever dream of, literally, and then disappearing in the dark of night and expecting her to go back to her life as it once had been before they'd come along and turned it upside down. When tears of anger began to leak from the corners of her eyes, she hoped viciously that she was ruining Arthur's stupid perfect leather sofa.

After a minute she stood up, huffily wiping her eyes, knowing that she was being silly and emotional but past the point of caring. She wasn't going to stay and wait pathetically to see if he'd come back; she was going _home right now_. Snatching her boots up from the end of the couch, she pulled them on, clumsy and impatient, and grabbed up her messenger bag. She left Arthur's blanket crumpled in a pile at the end of the sofa and stormed out.

She made it all the way to the bottom of the steps, throwing open the door and flinging herself out into the night—and right into whoever it was that was trying to come inside. She almost fell but strong, steady hands kept her upright. "Where are you going, Ariadne? It's two in the morning."

She'd know that voice anywhere.

The recognition of Arthur's voice and silhouette brought a confusing mix of anger and affection and relief. Anger won out. She bristled, watching him stand in the doorway, wanting to tell him that yes, in fact, it was two-in-the-goddamn-morning and where in the hell had he been, anyway? (somehow it was his fault that he made her feel so vulnerable).

"You _left._" She said, managing not to point an accusing finger, but past the point of caring that her tone was that of an accusatory pre-teen. He stiffened slightly, to her satisfaction.

"I went for a walk."

"In the _middle of the night_? You could have left a note." Gratified, she imagined he looked vaguely guilty. He met her gaze.

"I'm sorry if I worried you, Ariadne. Would you please come back inside? I'd like to sit down." His voice was as tired as she'd ever heard it. The apology was unexpected, and she felt the dynamic between them shift slightly—it was an acknowledgment of sorts, albeit a tiny one, that there was _something_ between them, enough that he owed her an apology—an acknowledgment that she cared where he was, and that _he knew_ she cared where he was, and that _he cared_ _that she cared_ where he was. She'd never expected _that_ from him, and it stopped her righteous anger parade in its tracks. Shifting her stance, she took a breath, mulling over what he'd said. After a beat, she turned and went back into the building. They climbed the stairs together and she was surprised to note that he was limping slightly, just discernible in the half-light from the streetlamps outside.

"Are you limping?"

"I'm fine." He pulled the door open (it was unlocked, Ariadne noted with a pang of guilt) and let her pass before going in and shutting the door behind himself. She set her bag down and followed him as he shuffled toward his bedroom. Tucking the briefcase and the PASIV into his closet, he shrugged his jacket and tie off and hung them meticulously on hangers (Ariadne was reminded ridiculously of Mr. Rogers) before moving toward the bathroom. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub and leaned forward, untying his dress shoes before slipping them off, wincing almost imperceptibly. Ariadne gasped from where she hovered at the doorway; there were huge holes in his bloody dress socks, revealing enormous raw blisters. The insides of his designer shoes were stained with blood. _What the hell was he doing out there?_

"Jesus, Arthur, what'd you do—try to run a marathon in your Guccis?" His face was stoic as he gingerly tried to peel off the remains of his dress socks, but he stopped breathing for a second when the frayed fabric, sticky with blood, pulled at the flayed skin. Which in turn tugged at Ariadne's heart. Ariadne moved over to the sink and started looking in the cupboards. "Here—do you have a basin or something?"

"Ariadne, I'm fine—"

"Arthur, just shut up and tell me where it is." He blinked and raised his eyebrows a little.

"Try under the kitchen sink." She went back to the kitchen, dug it out from the cupboard and rinsed it several time before bringing it into the bathroom and filling it with lukewarm water. Arthur cuffed his pants and stuck his feet in, socks and all.

"So, a walk, huh?" Ariadne put the lid down on the toilet and sat on it, watching him. He looked up from his feet, his expression thoughtful.

"I... needed to work some things out." _That is rather apparent, Arthur._

"And...?"

"I've come to a conclusion, yes."

"Oh good, so blisters the size of New York and ruined designer shoes were worth it." She couldn't help it; it just slipped out. Thankfully he chuckled. Then he met her gaze with a somewhat serious expression.

"Maybe. I hope so." She felt goosebumps run up her arms and dipped her chin, suddenly feeling both apprehensive and a little excited, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly why. Brushing it off, she stood up and knelt in front of him on the bathroom tile, pushing up her sleeves.

"Here." He looked surprised when she reached in and took his ankle, gently pulling at the dress sock material. The water had dissolved some of the blood, unsticking the fabric from his skin, and she was able to divest foot from sock after a minute of careful maneuvering. Arthur stopped breathing while she was working but didn't make a sound. "There." She laid the sodden sock on the white bathtub rim, where it dribbled pink water down the side and she had to pull the bathmat out of the way before it was stained. _Just like Arthur to buy a white bathmat. _

After another minute or two both feet were sock-free and she pulled a fresh, fluffy towel from the cupboard, moving the basin so that she could put the towel down. Arthur put his feet on it and she very, very gently patted his feet dry. At one point she glanced up at him and he was watching her with an expression on his face that she'd never seen before; it looked... pained. His eyebrows were scrunched together and she paused, holding the towel away from his foot. "Sorry—am I hurting you?" He blinked and shook his head slightly, then smiled.

"Ah—no. This is very kind; thank you." She nodded and stood to rummage in the medicine cabinet, pulling out a box of bandages and a tube of neosporin.

"Well, I hear they've invented these crazy things called tennis shoes. Maybe next time you go on a twenty-mile "walk", you should give 'em a try." He chuckled ruefully as she peeled the wrapper off a palm-sized bandage, spreading it with ointment before applying it to the side of his foot.

Three minutes and several bandages later, he stood and they surveyed his feet together—more band-aid than skin, now—before Ariadne bent and emptied the basin into the tub. She rinsed it and set it on the side to dry before gathering up Arthur's socks and tossing them in the trashcan, and finally washing her hands in a lather of warm water and lavender soap. Arthur put the towel in the clothes hamper and bent to pick up his shoes, shaking his head slightly as he examined the serious scuffing and the bloody interior, before he carried them out and set them on the floor in his closet to be dealt with in the morning. He looked up at Ariadne as she passed, heading for the kitchen. "Ariadne... thanks, again." She nodded, pausing as she brushed past him.

"I'm glad you came back, Arthur." She felt her cheeks redden as she said it, but she wanted him to know. It seemed like a reasonable admission given that she'd just spent fifteen minutes _washing his feet_. _What the hell has gotten into me? _She made to exit the room, but Arthur caught her elbow and gently turned her toward him.

"I'm glad I came back, too." He paused and cleared his throat. "Listen, I should leave tomorrow; it's not good for us to be seen together so soon after the job. But I'd like to come back again, to visit, in the future." As he talked, he held her elbow and watched her face, his own carefully blank. But there was an almost imperceptible edge of uncertainty creeping into his voice that made him sound young, younger than he usually did. She interrupted him by laying a palm on his arm, smiling.

"I'd like that, too. Goodnight, Arthur." She pushed past him, closed the bedroom door gently, and padded out to the sofa, climbing under the blanket (Arthur's blanket) where she smiled and smiled and smiled.


	8. Chapter 8: Le Soliel et Adieu

**A/N: **For some reason this chapter reminds me of 'No One's Gonna Love You More Than I Do' by Band of Horses. Love that song. Which, in light of all the reviews and favorites list adds I received, is a good way to describe how I feel about you all. Seriously. You all are AWESOME! So is my beta, piratesmiley. :)

The chapter title means 'Sunshine and Farewell'.

I still don't own Inception, or JGL, or Martha Stewart, or Band of Horses. Sigh.

* * *

**ARIADNE**

When she woke again it was to the sound of oil sizzling in a frying pan. Her first thought was, _Arthur's making breakfast, _and she couldn't help but smile. She opened her eyes to bright sunlight streaming in through the open balcony doors, and stretched, wondering what time it was before turning to look over her shoulder at the kitchen. Arthur was standing at the stove and poking something with a spatula, dressed impeccably, as always, in spite of his short night. This morning he was wearing a red apron over his white pinstriped shirt and gray tie, slacks and vest, and Ariadne hid a smile, finding it somewhat adorable. _He's leaving today, _she thought with a pang. The prospect didn't fill her with paralyzing dread as it had yesterday—she felt calmer after several hours of sleep—but it did imbue her with a sense of loss in a way that she couldn't quite parse.

She stood up and shuffled over to the kitchen, leaning against the counter as Arthur cooked competently and with ease. Ariadne just shook her head;her prowess in the kitchen consisted of a subtle mastery of the art of instant ramen, poptarts, and the take-out menu. It seemed like a strange skill to discover in the stoic point man; she'd kind of pegged him for a restaurant type. But she had to admit, there was something incredibly... _sexy_ about watching Arthur cook. Ariadne felt her cheeks flush and suppressed the thought, focusing on watching him stir some kind of batter. She glanced up at him. "Is there anything you're not good at?" Arthur looked up and gave her a brief smile.

"Good morning. How did you sleep?" He asked politely, reaching over to hand her a cup of coffee. She took a sip; sugar and milk, just the way she liked it. Bending to open the oven, Arthur withdrew a plate that had been warming with one gloved hand and set it on the counter next to her, adding, "Careful, that's hot." She nodded.

"I slept fine, thanks. How did _you_ sleep? How are your feet?" She glanced down at his feet on the kitchen tile, mysteriously swathed in a new pair of socks. Attention momentarily absorbed in whatever he was making, he slid a spatula under something in the pan and flipped it. _Cr__ê__pes! He's making cr__ê__pes!_ Ariadne tried not to look too eager, but she was suddenly starving. She _loved _crêpes. Was there anything he didn't know about her?

_He probably followed me on the way to school or something,_ she thought—she often stopped on the way and bought a crêpe and coffee for breakfast—but it was without resentment. She knew Arthur's job; she understood what that entailed. As she'd learned more about the team, it had dawned on her that there was no way they'd brought her in without a serious background check—it made stone-cold sense. And that was Arthur's department. Though in all honesty, it was fairly horrifying to have her privacy violated, and the idea that it had been Arthur doing it made her feel self-conscious (she tried not to think too hard about all the ticks and habits she knew she had. Exactly how much time _had_ he spent watching her?).

Deciding not to dwell on that, she realized that the crêpes and apron had distracted her, and adorable apron or no, Ariadne wasn't about to let the question about his feet slide. She reached out and touched his arm lightly, forcing him to turn and look at her. "Arthur—really, how are your feet this morning?"

"Much better, thanks to you." He smiled warmly at her in a way that was unfamiliar, and made her chest ache, before turning back to the stove. That sense of loss welled up again, but she pushed it back down, determined to enjoy the morning.

"Can I help with anything?" He nodded and gestured toward the fridge.

"Would you get the butter out? And there's a lemon curd I made earlier. Middle shelf on the right." She set her mug on the counter and opened the fridge, rummaging to find the butter, which she set on the counter. The lemon curd was in a delicate porcelain dish, garnished with a curl of lemon peel and a spring of mint. Ariadne removed the saran-wrap and got a little on her finger, so she liked it off. Approximately one millisecond later she was pretty sure it was the best thing she'd ever tasted. She had to make a conscious effort not to let her jaw drop.

"_Oh-my-god, Arthur_—nobody told me you were freaking Martha Stewart! _Where _did you learn to cook?" She realized she was clutching the bowl a little too tightly and put it down on the counter, reluctantly, where it sat by itself. All alone. That seemed like a shame. Arthur slid another crêpe onto a plate, distracting her from the lemon curd's plight.

"Mal taught me this." He said simply, shrugging. He poured more batter into the pan.

"_Mal_ taught you this?" Ariadne's mind was instantly flooded with images of the shade, images she had difficulty resolving with the picture of a happy woman in a kitchen somewhere teaching Arthur how to make fancy French breakfast food.

"I stayed with them for a couple months, once. I got shot on the job and Dom insisted that I come home with him; I wasn't really in the position to argue... And I sure as hell wasn't going home with Eames." Ariadne snorted. "I think Mal could see that I was getting bored stuck in the house all day, so she taught me how to cook." Arthur stuck the corner of his spatula under the edge of the crêpe, lifted it, looked at the bottom, and put it down again for another minute or two.

"My mother tried to teach me how to cook, once." Ariadne offered, watching him. "After I lit the stove on fire the third time, she banned me from the kitchen." Arthur chuckled and flipped the crêpe.

"My mother taught me to cook other things, like how to bake bread. I should do challa for you sometime; you'd like that." He scooped the last crêpe onto the pile of its fellows, picked up the plate of crêpes and the butter dish, and disappeared out onto the balcony, turning to call over his shoulder, "Would you grab the lemon curd?" Ariadne was only too happy to oblige. She snatched her coffee off the counter and followed him out onto the balcony, where a little round table was set with a lacy white tablecloth, equally-lacy napkins, silverware, china plates, and glass goblets. A bowl of powdered sugar, a fruit salad, and a plate of herbed chèvre were already sitting (rather crowded together) on the table, as was a pitcher of orange juice (Ariadne would have bet her entire earnings from the Fischer job that it was fresh-squeezed).

Arthur had clearly been cooking for hours—he must have gone shopping this morning—even after being up most of the night, and the day before that. Ariadne stood in the doorway, stunned, clutching the lemon curd as she took it all in. There was even a tiny vase of violets. Her chest tightened with unspent emotion and suddenly she was extremely conscious of her wrinkled t-shirt, her tangled hair, her unbrushed teeth. She couldn't remember the last time someone had made her breakfast like this—probably never. Arthur set the crêpes and butter down and beckoned once, impatiently. "Come on, Ariadne, it'll get cold."

She shuffled over to the table, slowly, and set the lemon curd down so that she could fish in her pocket. The bishop fell, muffled by the tablecloth, and rolled under the lip of the butter dish. She retrieved it and looked up at him, still holding her mug in her left hand. "You did this—all of this—for me?"

"Yes." He said simply. She felt goosebumps run over her arms and down the backs of her legs.

"_Why?_" But to that he just half-smiled, pulled off his apron, and picked up the pitcher of orange juice to pour.

"Ariadne, just sit and eat, please." It seemed a reasonable request. So she sat, and he sat, and they ate breakfast together in the sunlight.

* * *

After it was finished, after they had packed up the leftovers and washed dishes and folded the tablecloth, Arthur told her it was time to go. In spite of her previous resolution and her several hours of rest, her stomach immediately filled again with dread, more dread than was rational. But she was determined to take it like a stoic, so she nodded once, and quietly gathered up her boots, sweater, and messenger bag. _I can do this. _Arthur pressed a bag of leftovers into her hands, shrugged his suit jacket on, fetched the briefcase and the PASIV from the closet, and followed her out the door. He turned the key twice to lock the deadbolt and they went down to the street to call a cab.

At her apartment, he paid the cabbie and came in with her, circling through her apartment three times before he relaxed and settled in her bedroom doorway. Ariadne put the food in the fridge, set her bag at the end of the bed, and sat, trying not to look too miserable. The sense of loss had ballooned into something massive, smothering her, and she was struggling to stay collected. "It doesn't look like anyone's been here. You should be safe," Arthur offered. She nodded. "But just in case—" He opened the briefcase and pulled out a little handgun and a box of ammo. "There's a pawnshop on Rue Pètrelle where you can buy more of those. Cash only, of course. Learn to use it." Eames had showed her the basics at some point, and she took the handgun apprehensively, watching him, flipping the safety off and back on once. The pistol was cold in her palm as the chill of their reality settled over her, amplifying her dread so that her heart pounded in her chest. _There are people out there who would like to kill us. What if they come after me? What if they come after __**him**__?_ She looked up at him from the gun in her hand, eyebrows knit together in a tight frown.

"Arthur, you're coming back, right? You said you'd come back." She just couldn't wrap her head around the idea that _he might not come back_. He nodded once, reassuringly.

"Yes, I'll come back, when it's safe. Dom and I kept a low profile but word gets around—if they come after anyone, it'll be me or Dom. It'll be much better for you, if that happens, if I'm as far away from here as I can get." He snapped the briefcase shut and glanced up at her. She took a breath and set the gun on the bed, standing up to follow him out. Arthur paused at the front door, turning back toward her. "If you need to get in touch with me, talk to Miles. He'll know how to find Dom, and Dom will know how to find me."

"Okay." He tried to meet her gaze but she looked down, quickly, attempting to hide how upset she really was. She had her totem in her fist and didn't remember reaching for it.

"Ariadne, if you need me, I'll be here." The way he said it, she knew it was a promise, and she nodded, half-smiling, even though she felt like bursting into tears. She wanted desperately to throw her arms around him, fist the back of his jacket with her empty hand, and press her face into his lapel. Instead she stood there with her arms at her sides, totem clutched tightly in her hand.

"I'll see you soon." The bishop dug into her palm. He nodded, turned, and opened the door.

"See you soon."

And then he was gone.

* * *

**A/N: **Augh, you all, this chapter was hard to write because it makes me so sad! The beginning makes me smile, though. Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think!


	9. Chapter 9: D'être assez

**A/N: **The title of this chapter is "to be enough", which, in addition to describing Arthur's feelings, goes a long way in describing how I feel about you all-you all are just so **WONDERFUL** that I fear I will fall short in repaying the extravagant kindness you have shown me. However, I will give it a try.

I look forward to hearing what you think! :)

Piratesmiley is my beta half (yes, that's a pun, sorry)!

**WARNINGS: **Profanity. It _is_ Arthur (yay, Arthur!).

* * *

**ARTHUR**

A strange sense of euphoria carried Arthur back through the darkened streets, buoying him up even as waves of fatigue washed over him and each step burned as his shoes rubbed him raw. He hardly knew what he was doing; he just knew he needed to get back to see her, to see Ariadne one last time before he had to disappear. So that he wouldn't regret it. _Non je ne regrette rien._

Having no plan, he rather hoped she'd still be asleep when he got back to the apartment. It would give him time to think; to plot out what to say. And as to that, he really had no idea. He was having enough trouble putting his emotions into intelligible thoughts, much less coming up with something to tell _her_.

He didn't like this fly-by-night approach. It reminded him of something Dom, or Eames, would do, and it went against every fiber of his three-piece-suited being. By the time he was within a few blocks of the apartment, the euphoria had been replaced by nerves, and he stopped dead on the sidewalk, breathing and fidgeting with the die in his pocket. He adjusted his tie, staring off into the street, wondering why in the hell it had suddenly become so important to have something to say, why the idea of disappearing into the night—as he had done so many times before—made him choke. But it did, and there was no getting around it.

A neon sign in the window of Le Chat Noir threw splashes of colored light onto the cobblestones, and he stood, considering it, hands fisted in the pockets of his trousers. It was then that he consciously acknowledged what had been lurking just beneath the surface all of a fucking month and a half, really. Ever since she'd come back through that door with a half-smile on her lips. _It's pure creation._

He turned his die over in his pocket as memories flashed through his mind's eye—Ariadne sleeping in a lawn chair, Ariadne sketching, Ariadne drinking tea, Ariadne playing with her scarf.

Ariadne sitting on the sofa at the base of the hotel stairs. _Quick, give me a kiss._

Arthur shifted on the sidewalk. _It's not just that she makes me feel _something, _it's that she makes me feel a very _specific _something. _The neon sign flickered, and he blinked.

_I love her, _he thought, surprised. He stopped playing with his die. _I'm in love with her._

_Okay, so I'm a bit slow on the emotional learning curve._

It was then that the full implications of what he'd done hit him. He'd left her in the apartment—in the middle of the night, he'd just gotten up and left, and if _she_ woke up and left before he got there, he might never have a chance to take it back.

_FUCK._

He turned up the street and ran. Wild thoughts flew through his head like bits of confetti as he raced up the hill, ignoring the burning of his blisters and the slick squish of what he suspected was blood. Part of him—the chickenshit fraction—hoped she'd already have gone, but when he reached the doorstep to the apartment, she flew out of it, practically fell into his arms. They floundered for a moment, staring at each other in the yellow lamplight as Arthur groped for something to say. What came out was, "Where are you going, Ariadne? It's two in the morning." Like he hadn't just been out walking, like he hadn't just almost skipped town and left her there without so much as a note. He winced at his own idiocy.

"You _left._" She spat. She was _angry. _He felt himself stiffen; he should have expected that. _But I came back, _he wanted to say. _I was an idiot, but I came back, Ariadne._

"I went for a walk." _Oh, please._ He could practically hear Eames' guffaw. She rounded on him, taking a step forward, shoulders rigid. He had to resist the urge to take a step back.

"In the _middle of the night_? You could have left a note." And there it was—that almost imperceptible inflection. _I hurt her, _he thought with surprise, watching her expression to make sure he hadn't imagined it. He realized he hadn't, and the rest of the puzzle pieces fell into place. _Oh._

He'd almost fucked things up before they'd even begun, but maybe, _just maybe_, he could salvage this. He met her gaze.

"I'm sorry if I worried you, Ariadne. Would you please come back inside? I'd like to sit down." It was an acknowledgment of something deeper, and they both knew it. She watch him for a beat, chewing her lip like she did when she was deep in thought. To his immense relief, after a moment she exhaled and turned back into the building.

All of a sudden, he felt incredibly tired and completely lost. They climbed the stairs together and he was embarrassed when she noticed his limp. He went into the apartment and took refuge in his routine of putting things away as he tried to think of something to say next. Somehow he didn't think he'd sweep her off her feet with, _"Hey, Ariadne, I know I've been a stick-in-the-mud for the past month and a half, not to mention that I stalked you for a few days in the beginning to make sure you weren't a narq, and I have to go away for a while because I don't want us to get whacked, but really I've just realized I'm madly in love with you, so would you mind waiting around?"_ This was important and he didn't want to fuck it up. She hovered, waiting, probably, for some better explanation. He went into the bathroom and took his shoes off, drawing out the distraction.

But in the end he didn't have to think of something to say because _she _told _him _(god, she was beautiful and fearless and he loved her, he fucking _loved _her).

She washed his blistered feet. It was terrifying and intimate and somehow it made him want to cry.

Afterward, he lay on his back on his empty bed, exhausted but wide-awake, and stared at the ceiling, watching the pattern of light the had slipped through the shutters. His feet hurt but that wasn't what was keeping him up. He sighed and shifted slightly, praying for sleep, for some sliver of rationality that would tie him down to earth again. He would have gone out to the kitchen to get a glass of water but Ariadne was out there and he didn't trust what he might do if he opened the door between them. It occurred to him that he should have offered to take the couch, but it was too late now. _Goddammit, am I ever going to get _anything _right?_

He longed for the sanctuary of the job, the quiet snick of pieces falling into place. He didn't like feeling this vulnerable; it went against his nature, against everything he'd leaned in the past eight years. There was something sick in the fact that such... _happiness_ filled him with unbridled fear. But he'd chosen this, hadn't he? He'd run across the city, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He could hardly blame her if he couldn't take the heat.

But most of all he felt incredibly, immensely inadequate. In the face of the vastness of her compassion he had... what? A nice suit, a dubious history, and, if Eames was to be believed, the personality of a dry sponge. What could he possibly offer _her_?

He wanted to do something for her, as she'd done for him. To _show_ her. To help her remember.

He rolled over, mapping the evening out from the beginning. Really, he should have known when he'd bought the fucking chocolate. _Wine and dark chocolate. Jesus Christ._

Suddenly, he knew what to do.


	10. Chapter 10: Disparaître

**A/N: **You all are so incredible. Your support means more to me than I can say. THANK YOU! :)

Please let me know what you think!

The chapter title means 'disappear'.

**WARNINGS: **Profanity.

* * *

**ARTHUR**

He didn't sleep much. He never slept much, but that was beside the point, which was that she had filled him with a euphoria that he couldn't shake (not that he wanted to). She'd satisfied some need he hadn't realized he'd had and now he was bursting with that knowledge, giddy, drunk on it. So instead of sleeping, he spent much of the night thinking about _her_. _I love her, _he'd think, and marvel at the way she had remade his world as easily as any dreamscape.

_Okay, now you're getting carried away._ He shifted on the mattress, grateful that Eames wasn't here to witness this. Eames would have seen right through him and he wasn't in the mood for the compulsory ribbing that would accompany said realization (the last time Arthur had even looked sideways at a girl—and this was years ago, mind you—Eames had spent weeks (_weeks_) popping into dreamscape practice runs as her. Arthur wasn't sure what had disturbed him more—the idea that he'd formed such a serious psychological attachment to a girl who served him sandwiches a few times a week that he was projecting a shade of her in the dreamscape, or, after he'd realized what was going on, the fact that Eames had spent a significant amount of time stalking the poor girl just so that he could forge her appearance and give Arthur a hard time. In fact, Eames had found it so funny that 'sandwich girl' impressions had become, much to Arthur's chagrin, something of a tradition. He was surprised Eames hadn't treated Ariadne to an encounter).

Eventually he did manage to fall asleep, and when he woke again, the gray, creeping dawn had replaced his euphoria with one stone-cold conviction: _the best thing I can do for her is leave. _ He'd thought that he was helping her by coming here; he'd thought that he was taking care of the team. Really he was just being selfish. _She_ still had the option of a normal life, if she chose it. A significant portion of him believed that the twisted world of extraction didn't deserve her; she was young and brilliant and unsullied—she could make her way in the normal world and be damn successful. The nobler fraction of him wished she would.

The other side of it, the side he could hardly bear to acknowledge, was that if he knew anything to be true, it was that _he_ didn't deserve her. _He_ was jaded and broken and older than his years, and he'd accepted long ago that his own future wasn't going to bring a little cottage and a dog and a white picket fence. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that he couldn't offer her the kind of life _she _deserved. She deserved someone who could be more than a suit and a gun.

It made him wish more than ever that he could talk to Dom. His partner, the closest thing he'd had to a real friend over the past eight years (Arthur supposed in some interpretation of the term Eames might count, too—a very loose interpretation of the term). Maybe Dom would be able to talk some sense into his head.

Because the truth was that reality was lurking (barreling down on them like a fucking freight train, more like), and Arthur was first and foremost a realist. The more Arthur thought about it, the more he knew that he needed to get the hell out of there. He had a few hours left with her at best—and even that was being selfish. Because aside from the fact that getting attached to someone like him would do her no favors, he knew that Cobol still had a price on his head. He knew he would never forgive himself if they came after her to get to him.

So he was worried. Justifiably—it was his nature, and he'd heard some nasty, though unsurprising, stories about what had happened to Nash. Cobol wasn't going to take it well if the inception had taken, given that they were a major shareholder in Fischer's company, and if they tracked he or Dom to Fischer, they'd _know_—and historically Cobol not taking it well had involved guns, lots and lots of guns. And that would just be the cherry on the cake, given that Cobol already had a price on their heads.

The point man's instinct (slightly over-compensatory instinct that it was) was to rustle up a couple of kevlar vests, a few nice semi-automatics, and a grenade launcher, and settle down to make sure that if Cobol ever tried to mess with Ariadne, they'd regret it (of course, given that this was _Paris_, he might have to rethink the grenade launcher). But in all likelihood (he prayed) they didn't even know Ariadne existed, yet—they'd be coming after _him, _and thus every minute he spent here he was endangering her. If it came down to a shoot-out, Arthur wanted Ariadne as far away as possible. The more oceans in between, the better.

It wasn't that she was incapable—Ariadne was clearly extremely intelligent and level-headed. But this was reality, not the dreamscape, and she just didn't have the practical experience to go toe to toe with an organization like Cobol. Arthur didn't want to think about her odds if Cobol came after her (he didn't like his own odds, for that matter, but at least he had some experience in how to avoid getting caught). The thought made him sick. He'd just have to do the best he could to draw attention away from Paris.

The moral of the story was that the best thing Arthur could do for Ariadne was get his ass off the fucking continent. Miles would keep an eye on Ariadne, and Arthur would make some serious tracks to draw attention elsewhere.

But he'd get her a gun. That, at least, he could do.

He got up as the gray dawn was fading into a soft blue, and showered and dressed quietly. _I have to leave today, _he told himself again, firmly, buttoning his shirt collar as he carefully locked away the sinking feeling in his chest, making a pact with himself that he would at least enjoy the time he had left with her.

He would allow himself a morning—a breakfast—and when the time came, he would walk away.

When he was dressed he very carefully opened the bedroom door, sneaking into the kitchen where he located a sticky-note and wrote, _'Ariadne, I'm going to the market. Be back soon, A'. _He stuck it to the refrigerator and tiptoed past the couch, pausing for a moment to look over at her. She was curled onto her side, bishop tucked into her fist, and as he stood there she sighed in her sleep and turned over, muttering something unintelligible. He watched her lashes flutter against her cheeks, trying and failing to quash the sense of awe that arose in him at her beauty and her innocence. Afraid he'd wake her, he turned toward the door and slipped out, turning the locks quietly behind him.

He'd tucked a shopping bag underneath one arm and he strolled along the sidewalk, making lists of possibilities in his head. It all depended on what they had at the market, of course, but it was obvious crêpes were in order; he'd seen her stop and buy one for breakfast three out of the three days he'd tailed her. She usually went for fruit-filled, but she'd ordered Nutella once. And she always ordered a café-au-lait to go with it, so he'd have to pick up some decent coffee, too. All he had at the apartment was tea.

He'd never done this—make breakfast for a girl, that is. The few instances the opportunity had presented itself he'd been more preoccupied with dressing quickly and quietly disappearing into the chilly pre-dawn air. Ariadne was different, obviously, and he felt himself looking forward to her reaction. In spite of his worry about Cobol and his decision to leave, he found that the idea of making her happy made him happy. Really happy. Strolling down the sidewalk, he had to resist the strange and sudden urge to whistle (he didn't want to think about what Eames and Dom would say if they ever heard him _whistling. _If they didn't die of shock or suffocate from laughing they'd probably try to declare it a national holiday).

The city wasn't quite awake yet and he passed only the occasional fellow pedestrian as he walked. His feet hurt but he'd opted for a pair of (rather unprofessional) padded running socks and it wasn't anything he couldn't handle (it was a far cry from being shot, in any case). The overwhelming feeling of cheerful anticipation hung on Arthur like an ill-fitting sweater. Detached and collected, he wore like a second skin. He could just as easily do discontented and broody. But the truth was that outside the thrill of the job (which he did, admittedly, love—_there's nothing quite like it_), Arthur hadn't spent much time being happy over the eight years since he'd fallen into extraction. So he distrusted the feeling. But that didn't mean he wasn't enjoying it.

He was pleased to find that there were some nice lemons at the market, so he bought those along with a fresh chèvre, cream, eggs, coffee, and butter, smiling again with anticipation. Arthur liked cooking because it paid to be meticulous. His favorite recipes were finicky pastries and soufflés, where one was rewarded for good timing and attention to detail.

The walk back to the apartment was short and brisk and before he knew it he was back in the kitchen. Ariadne was still asleep, so he tried to be quiet (and, being Arthur, he was fairly good at it), but the act of cooking itself—mixing, frying, chopping—required a certain amount of noise. He kept a worried eye on her, glancing out of the kitchen now and then, but to his relief she slept through it. She needed the sleep—she'd been exhausted.

By the time he'd finished setting up, he was fairly pleased with himself. The violets had been stolen from a window box down the street, for which he felt sheepishly guilty. But this was Paris and surely his neighbor would have understood the tribulations of love.

He saved the actual crêpe-making for last, and was in the midst of frying the first when Ariadne appeared. Her hair was mussed and she still looked more asleep than awake; Arthur had to stifle a smile as he handed her a cup of coffee. "Good morning. How did you sleep?" He asked, and immediately felt like an idiot because a) he knew she'd been up at 2am looking for his dumb ass, and b) it seemed like a weirdly formal greeting after having someone _wash your feet._ But she didn't seem to mind. She smiled and sipped her coffee and they chatted as Arthur finished putting things together.

The expression on her face when she stood in the doorway and saw the breakfast spread made it all worth it, and he tucked the glowing feeling in his chest carefully away where it would warm him when he was holed up in some godforsaken place halfway across the world.

He watched her tip her bishop on the table, knowing she'd remember, hoping she'd understand.

He could hardly stand to leave her at the apartment, struggling to suppress images of Cobol thugs bursting through the door, and he circled through three times to make sure the place hadn't been bugged. He knew Ariadne's apartment well from his surveillance, and when he was satisfied he settled in the doorway of the bedroom, where Ariadne was sitting on the bed. The idea of leaving tugged at him more than he had expected, but Arthur was well-practiced at emotional partitioning, and he slipped into his point man persona, refusing to feel the ache in his chest. _I need to keep her safe._

She had the same expression on her face as she'd had at LAX, but her eyes got as big as saucers when he'd passed her the gun. To his relief, however, after a moment she took it with a practiced hand, nodding. He didn't think she'd ever handled a gun in the real world, but he'd had Eames teach her in the dreamscape, and he'd tested her himself. She was a natural, and he grinned in a sharp way at the memory of watching her gun down, neatly, several projections in a row. If any of Cobol's bastards came after her, they would at least be in for a nasty surprise. He only prayed she wouldn't hesitate to take the shot.

And then it was time to go. He wanted to stay; he wanted to wrap his arms around her and press his chin to her hair, but he'd allowed himself more than enough emotional extravagance already, so he moved toward the door and opened it, preparing to step out of her life. But he made the mistake of glancing back at her, and she completely disarmed him as he looked down at her and recognized all the emotions that he was struggling so hard to suppress mirrored in her expression. It pained him to think that she was upset; he feared she felt he was abandoning her. "Ariadne, if you need me, I'll be here." It was a promise, and if Arthur was good at one thing, it was keeping his word. He was, after all, Mr. Reliable. So she smiled and nodded, releasing him (he tried not to see the tears in her eyes). Before he could find another reason to stay, he forced himself over the threshold and out into the (ironic) sunlight, where he did something else he was good at: he disappeared.

* * *

**END PART I**


	11. Chapter 11: Perdre

**A/N: **Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who continued to review and add this story to their alerts and favorites lists, even though I abandoned it for an obscene length of time. I have no idea how you even continued to find my story! I truly wouldn't be here without your support. And, as always, thank you to piratesmiley.

The section title means "to pull".

The chapter title means "to lose".

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**Part II: Tirer**

**ARIADNE**

She didn't know how long she stood there, staring at the place where he had been. But by the time she found her way back to herself (she noted with her architect's eye), the light in the room had changed. Taking a careful breath, she attempted to ease her death-grip on the totem and consciously struggled for a moment before she was able to open her fist. A livid purple line marked where the base had dug into her palm, but she had to resist the urge to again close her hand around the warm brass, her solitary and tenuous tie to reality. _Less than two months in, and I'm already losing it. _Somehow the thought cut through her stupor, and she straightened up, shaking her head to clear it. She took another tremulous breath, squared her shoulders, and reluctantly tucked the bishop into her jeans pocket, where it pressed reassuringly against her leg. Her hand felt empty (it wasn't the only thing).

After another long moment, she turned back toward the bedroom, where she moved the handgun to the bedside table (she shivered involuntarily as she touched it) and crawled into bed, fully clothed. She didn't even bother to kick her shoes off, and thought, before she could stop herself, _that would've irked Arthur_. She sighed and pressed her cheek into the pillow, desperate to forget anything to do with Arthur or the inception for just five minutes, but she could still see the pistol glinting darkly at her from the nightstand, a grim counterpoint to the wretched chorus in her mind: _"What now? What now? What now?"_ She pulled the duvet over her head in an attempt to stifle her panic, taking deep, slow breaths in the warm, close darkness until her thoughts and pulse had slowed. Eventually, she dozed a little.

When she woke again, it had begun to rain outside; she could hear the patter of it on the windowpanes. For some reason, this surprised her, and she sat up to look out at the weather. _But it was so sunny outside this morning, _she thought, vaguely irritated, and then laughed at her own ridiculousness and at the irony of it all. The laughter broke the stillness in the room and brought with it the realization that she'd somehow come to some sort of resolution during her brief nap. _I just have to pretend everything is normal, get back to… being normal, and wait to hear something._ Generally, she hated waiting. She had a feeling that wouldn't even begin to cover it in this situation. But the only thing she could do was stay alert, keep her head busy, and be ready when she did hear something. Sighing a little, she dipped her chin in determination and drew the covers back to go get her books.

Over the next few months, she waited expectantly, but no word came. She threw herself back into her studies, telling herself it made sense—she was supposed to behave normally, she'd put too much work and money into this degree to throw it away—when deep, deep down she really knew that it was a desperate attempt to plug the sudden, gaping hole in her world.

She moved into a nicer apartment, nice but not too nice. She told herself she'd chosen it for its proximity to campus, and that it had nothing to do with the little balcony or the view. When the flat still felt empty after weeks of living in it, she went out and adopted a cat, a sturdy little tabby manx that she named Escher (for whom she'd developed a recent fondness), and told herself it had nothing to do with penrose steps.

When she wasn't studying, she made time to go out with her friends for coffee, but it was difficult to feign interest in Amélie's new boyfriend from Toulouse or Ingrid's latest haircut when the café put her in mind of exploding cobblestones, of oranges and books suspended midair, of the city bent in on itself, physics be damned. The totem in her pocket pressed into her leg, a constant reminder that she and her friends' realities didn't quite reconcile.

More and more often, she spent her free time roaming the city, haunting places like the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, Notre Dame. Sketchbook in hand, she would draw, and if her designs were whimsical or tended to eschew the laws of physics, well, surely it was the influence of Escher and nothing more. She studied people on her walks, too, scrutinizing strange face after strange face, and refused to acknowledge the little constriction in her chest every time she caught a glimpse of dark hair, a lithe form, a smart suit. She did her best to forget, to be patient, but patience had never been one of her virtues and with every day of oppressive silence she could feel herself unraveling.

_Ariadne, if you need me, I'll be here._

It was the dreaming that finally pushed her over the edge. They'd spent so much time training with the PASIV that she hadn't dreamt since the first week on the job. So it was a bit of a surprise when she woke a month and a half after returning to Paris, gasping and covered in cold sweat, stabbed into consciousness by Mal's shade. And after the nightmares started, they kept coming. Escher stopped sleeping on the foot of her bed, tired of being kicked in the night, and Ariadne stopped sleeping in general, developing a serious addiction to coffee and late-night television. Tipping her bishop had become a full-on compulsion and her nightstand was developing a scar where she knocked it over, repeatedly, when it wasn't in her fist.

But the worst was when she started dreaming of Arthur. Sometimes she'd dream of working, of his kind half-smile as they bent over some schematic, and sometimes she'd dream of his hands on her, of the warm slick of skin against skin and the taste of his mouth and her tangled hair spread over them as they breathed and moved together. She'd wake panting, drowning in a bizarre mixture of physical need and the suffocating sense of loss that, when conscious, she worked so hard to suppress. Bishop clutched in her fist, she'd stumble out of bed and into the night, desperate to stifle the agonized howl in her chest with darkness and city lights and cool night air, to lose herself in the soothing, rhythmic action of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes she'd walk until the creep of dawn began to gray the edges of the black sky and she could tumble back through her apartment door soothed by the knowledge that at least another night was over.

Once she had been afraid to go out by herself when it was dark, but prowling the city at night didn't scare her anymore. There were darker things to fear.

That was what she told herself, at least. At her grimmest and most introspective, she sometimes thought she was daring something to happen. If someone came after her, one of Fischer's men, for example, at the least it would be a break in the monotony and a confirmation that she hadn't imagined it all. It was easy to think that she had, now that everyone had gone. She was tied to them, to the inception, only by the solid press of brass in her pocket, the weight of the handgun in her bag, and her flush bank account. More than she liked to admit, she questioned her sanity.

Eventually, the others, too, began to make cameos in her dreams. Not as vividly or as frequently as Arthur, but often enough. She dreamt of conversations with Cobb, of drinking tea with Yusuf, of laughing with Eames. It took her a few months to realize that the team had been the closest thing to family she'd had in a long time, and that the consuming sense of loss extended to them, as well. Eventually, in her walks, she found her way back to the warehouse, and on the nights when it was too much she would turn on all the lights and sit in a lawnchair, staring at the empty desks. Soothed by the familiar smell of dust, the chemical tang of Yusuf's workstation, and the feel of the wood grain beneath her palms, she would sit at her worktable for hours. Once she actually fell asleep there, and she was shocked to find that she actually slept for a few hours before being woken by a nightmare.

That was when she recognized that she was truly coming apart at the seams.

So she turned herself in to Miles. Or at least that's what it felt like. He cornered her one chilly fall day at the end of class and pulled her into his office (it was the first time she'd actually seen him use it). She watched him take in the dark shadows under her eyes, her bitten fingernails, the weight she'd lost. "How have you been, Ariadne?" He asked, in the way that parents and teachers do, when they already know the answer but they want to hear it spoken out loud.

"Has my work slipped, professor?" She asked him, dissembling, meeting his gaze briefly before dropping her eyes to her folded hands.

"No, your work is impeccable as ever… But I know as well as anyone that the transition can be hard." He took off his glasses, folded them, and set them gently on the desk before leaning back in his chair, the better to scrutinize her. After a moment of pregnant silence, Ariadne let out a heavy sigh and looked up from her hands.

"I don't know how to handle this." She told him bluntly, paused for a moment, and then shifted again. "I'm not handling this." He nodded once, curtly.

"You've not been sleeping." She shook her head.

"No, I haven't. But it's more than that—I walk around and watch people and they have no idea what it's like, what we can do." He nodded again and smiled a little sympathetic smile.

"And I miss it—I miss them." She found herself saying, gazing up into his kind and wizened visage. "It just—it just isn't enough anymore, you know?" She finished lamely, fully aware that she sounded like a junkie. He frowned thoughtfully and shifted in his chair. After a moment he sat forward and picked up his reading glasses, which he put back on.

"How would you like to come stay with us for Christmas?" He asked, opening a leather planner to December before glancing back up at her over the rims of his spectacles. "We'll be leaving the Saturday after school lets out. We've a home in Sablét, a lovely little village in the Provencale. My wife is a fantastic cook." She looked up at him, surprised, trying to tell if he was serious.

"I—okay."

"Dom and the children will be there, too." She nodded once.

"Thanks, professor."

"You should call me Miles, my dear girl." She nodded again as she picked up her bag and moved toward the door. "I'll have Sharon ring you with the details." As she grasped the doorknob, she smiled. Her cheeks felt stiff, and she realized it was the first time she'd really smiled in months. She smiled harder.

"Okay."


	12. Chapter 12: Inévitabilité

**A/N:** Thank you so much to everyone who continues to support me! This chapter title is 'Inevitability'.

* * *

**ARTHUR**

The door slid shut, and the point man's long strides carried him quickly away from her apartment. Given that he prided himself on discipline and self-control, he didn't once look back. He flagged a cab as soon as he saw one and got out at Charles du Gaulle, where he bought a ticket for the next available flight—Philadelphia. Stateside. It suited as well as anything. Only when he was actually seated on the plane, waiting for takeoff (he permitted himself the luxury of first class), did he allow himself one small concession of emotion: he pulled his ipod out of his jacket pocket, plugged in, leaned back, and closed his eyes. In his mind's eye, he saw her as she'd been when he'd left: small, perplexed, scared. And now she was alone. The thought tortured him and he clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. It was all he could do not to throw off the seatbelt and run headlong off the plane back to her. _Jesus, point man, _he scolded himself, _she's a twenty-three year old graduate student, not a lost goddamn puppy. She can take care of herself. This is for the best. _He attempted to ground himself by gripping the armrests firmly, but still his mind whirled.

For some reason, he thought suddenly of the mark on one of his first jobs. Heir to one of the big production companies headquartered in LA, the twenty-something had spent most of his time surfing. Thus, the first layer of the dream had been the beach. Arthur had approached him, under guise of a business proposition, to pump him for information, and the bleach-blonde future millionaire had accused Arthur of 'harshing his calm' (at the time, it had occurred to Arthur it might harsh his calm even further to discover that the buxom blonde lounging next to him on the beach blanket was actually a thirty-something, obscenely-irritating British man, but given the state of the job, he hadn't seen fit to mention it). Arthur's thoughts turned to Ariadne again and he couldn't help thinking, _my calm is most definitely harshed. _When the flight attendant passed, he broke another one of his self-imposed rules and ordered a gin-and-tonic.

Three drinks later, he pressed his flushed cheek to the coolness of the thick, plexiglass window and muttered sadly, in a sudden flash of drunken clarity that was intrinsically tied to Ariadne, "My problem is that I don't know what home means anymore." With that, he leaned back into the seat again and closed his eyes, falling asleep with Florence + the Machine singing in his ears. _This is a gift, it comes with a price: who is the lamb and who is the knife?_

He didn't dream. But when he woke, he was immediately aware of a heavy sense of loss. He watched the die fall—five, five, five—and knew that if he had dreamt, he'd have dreamt of her.

By the time he stepped off the plane in Philadelphia, he'd managed to regain his composure. The point man stepped out into the humid, summer air and coolly hailed a cab, angry at himself for losing his self-control yet again, and resigned to put all things Ariadne far from his mind. With that he fell into a familiar routine, jumping from city to city every few weeks, losing himself in the momentum. He monitored Fischer and Cobol as best he could, and filled the rest of his time with a blur of books and theaters and museums. Try as he might, however, he couldn't seem to forget Ariadne. He'd be standing in the foyer of some museum and find himself wondering, suddenly, what she'd have to say about the architecture. Or a woman would pass him and he'd catch a flash of color at her neck and turn before he could stop himself. He'd long since deleted all traces of the Fischer job from his laptop, Ariadne included, but he'd discovered that there was a picture of a lecture hall, in which she was seated in the third row, on the architecture department website (after this initial discovery, it turned out there were strangely more reasons than one might initially expect for the point man to access said website). Not knowing how she was doing ate at him, and eventually he caved and called Miles from a payphone in Washington DC, outside the American Portrait gallery. "You know how it is, Arthur," The old man told him. "Or at least, you should remember. She's faring as well as she can. She looks like she hasn't been sleeping… but then, none of us do. I've been keeping an eye on her, and I shall continue to do so." Arthur hadn't liked the knowing tone in the professor's voice, and he'd ended the conversation shortly after that.

Five months later found him sitting at a little table in a museum café at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop. As a general rule, Arthur was a fan of schedules. Lists, tables, schedules, itineraries—all served to keep things organized, which in turn facilitated efficiency, productivity, and preparedness. Though he'd never been a boy scout (and he'd never wanted to be one), he felt he could whole-heartedly get behind their motto, 'Be Prepared'. Noting his propensity for (semi-neurotic) organization, his college roommates had nicknamed him 'Spreadsheet' and had gauged the level of interest he had in a girl by whether or not she made it onto the weekly schedule (few ever had).

Arthur liked schedules, but as he leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the computer screen, he found that this one was giving him trouble. The six month mark was coming up, which meant the traditional post-job meeting where he and Dom would share the information they had gathered and calculate the probability that the job had gone off undetected, as well as their continued likelihood of anonymity, safety, and survival. Usually there was also a lot of drinking involved, by way of celebrating the fact that they had managed to survive another six months.

The trouble was that this six-month mark happened to fall right before Christmas, and Dom and the kids would be celebrating in France with Miles and Elaine. Given that it was France, Arthur figured there was a fairly high probability that Ariadne would be there, too, and therein lay the source of both the hesitation and the temptation. He hadn't spoken to her since he'd stepped out of her apartment in July, and the idea of meeting her again both thrilled and terrified him. He loved her, he was as convinced of that now as he had been over that long night in July, but he was just as convinced of his own unworthiness. And so his mouse hovered over that empty cell in the spreadsheet schedule, as he wrestled with the probability and potential outcomes of such a meeting (said roommates had also had a tendency to call him 'Arthur 3000', in reference to his robotic approach to human interaction). Eventually he clicked on the cell (he could hear Eames in his head exclaiming, _it's a calendar date, not a bloody engagement, you neurotic moron!) _and wrote, "meeting with D and co." With that he saved the document, shut off the laptop, folded it into a dark leather satchel, and shrugged on his black overcoat.

As he exited the coffee shop and turned left down the street, he failed to notice the tall man who glanced up from the newspaper as Arthur passed. As the door swung shut, the man drew a cell phone from his pocket, dialed, and spoke into it quietly.

"He's headed your way."


	13. Chapter 13: La Chasse

**A/N:** Hey, all. I'll alive! I am incredibly flattered that so many of you have requested that I continue this! My life is crazy busy, but, given that there are so many of you who asked, I promise that I do intend to finish the story, however long it takes. As always, piratesmiley is my wonderful beta.

**Warnings: **profanity

The chapter title means 'the hunt'.

And so, without further ado...

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**ARTHUR**

Arthur was a careful man—deliberate in the way he moved, precise in the way he spoke, methodical in the way he thought. Thus, it didn't take Arthur long to realize that he was being followed, but it took him another minute to work out what to do about it. What Arthur didn't know was whether his tail was a single person or several, and that made him uncomfortable. It was an unknown variable, something that, on a better day, would have irked Arthur to no end, but today—with the stakes riding as high as they were, after the Fischer job and what had happened with Cobol—he felt the weight of it, physically, in his gut. He was the Point Man; it was his job to eliminate the unknown variables. The more he knew about a situation, the better he could keep it under control, but here he was flying blind. Moreover, the implications of being followed were whirling in the back of his mind, fueling the spike of adrenaline that was already coursing through his bloodstream, but he pushed those thoughts under and focused solely on losing the man. The one thing he did know was that if it was only a single person, he wouldn't be alone for long. Especially if he worked for Cobol. The faster he could lose the guy, the better.

A subway entrance appeared on his left-hand side, about five paces ahead. For the briefest of moments Arthur hesitated, hedging his bets. The subway was risky, but it was a calculated risk—there was a possibility of being cornered, but this was a major terminal, there were multiple entrances, and, given that it was still rush hour, it was packed with people. If he was cunning and lucky, he might be able to worm his way back out the other exit. Also, Arthur was 85% sure that Cobol goons wouldn't draw weapons and open fire onto a crowded subway platform, at least not in a first-world country. Given that he'd left his bullet-proof vest back at the hotel, Arthur figured this was probably another reason to put it in the 'pro' category. He ducked down into the subway entrance, taking the stairs at a business-like pace.

According to the signage, a train was due to arrive in two minutes, which would make things even more crowded and hopefully provide the cover that Arthur needed to lose the guy. Tucking himself behind a vending machine, he waited tensely for the man to appear, forcing himself, as the seconds ticked by, to take even, deep breaths. Sure enough, after a full minute and a half, he spotted his tail coming down the escalator, eyes scanning the crowd. As luck would have it, the train arrived at that moment and released an additional crush of people, hiding the man from Arthur's vantage point. However, that also meant that the tail hadn't noticed Arthur, who ducked low and joined the torrent of bodies flowing out of the station and back up to ground level. Arthur hoped that the tail would think he'd gotten on the train, and in the meantime Arthur would have time to hail a cab and get the hell out of there.

He reached the surface and took several hurried steps toward the curb, arm already raised in taxi-hailing fashion, keeping his gaze turned in the direction of the subway entrance. After a few agonizing seconds, a taxi rounded the corner and slowed. Arthur wrenched the door open and jumped in, barking "JFK" more forcefully than he'd intended. The cab driver nodded and Arthur ducked down, turning to look out the back window at the subway entrance. As the taxi pulled away from the curb (at a snail's pace, it seemed), Arthur saw his tail emerge from the subway entrance, and he cursed mentally as he ducked down further, hoping he hadn't been seen.

The trip to the airport was longer than he would have liked, and he spent it watching warily out the windows, but he didn't spot anyone else following. Being Arthur, however, this only served to make him more cautious. When they arrived at the airport, he tipped the taxi driver exorbitantly and headed into the terminal, where he paused by the departures board momentarily, reading the flights and thinking.

He needed to make his way to France to meet up with Dom (& co., his brain reminded him stubbornly), but he couldn't take a direct route in case his movements were (and it seemed more and more probable that they were) being monitored. At the same time, the tail had him worried for his team—if someone had come looking for him, had they found Dom, Eames, Yusuf, or Ariadne? He needed to get a message to the others to make sure they were on their guard, and to check that everyone was safe. He knew Dom and Eames; he was confident in their ability to look out for themselves, and Yusuf seemed more than competent, but what _about_Ariadne? The probability that Fischer/Cobol were aware of her existence was low, he thought (he _hoped_), unless they had already compromised one of the others… in which case, she was a sitting duck in Paris by herself. On the other hand, if he inadvertently led them to her, he'd never forgive himself. The thought made his chest constrict and he tugged at his tie, reflexively, swallowing. He needed to get to her as quickly as possible, and she'd need to be moved somewhere else, somewhere safer… perhaps Tokyo. As soon as he could, he'd give Saito a call. In the meantime, he'd have to be fucking careful. Extremely fucking careful. Unease (he refused to acknowledge it as fear) weighed in his gut like a stone, compounding the tight feeling in his chest. But he'd reached a decision of sorts, and, as such, it compelled motion. Straightening, he took a glance around to see if he was being watched, adjusted his satchel, and began striding over toward the booking counters. He'd buy a ticket to Barcelona through Brussels, hop a train in Spain, cover his tracks, and work his way up to the Provencale as quickly as he could while maintaining a low profile.

Predictably, the ticket agent was a dirty blonde, overly-madeup version of Airhostess Barbie, complete with the perky personality. It took every ounce of his considerable self-control to stand calmly at the counter and maintain a bland expression as her bright red, manicured nails tapped excruciatingly slowly on the keyboard and he tried to tune out the pricking on the back of his neck that was screaming _time is already running out _over his adrenaline jitters. Eventually, after the approximate span of an ice age, he had a boarding pass in his hand and was able to pass through security and find his gate.

The feeling of urgency only intensified over the transatlantic flight, while he was passing through immigration and customs in Brussels, and during his flight to Barcelona. By the time he got to Spain, even though he hadn't seen anyone else following him, he felt like he'd aged fifteen years. It was all he could do to keep his phone in his pocket, resisting the compulsive and completely irrational urge to call Ariadne and make sure she was okay. _For the love of all that is holy, Point Man, calm the fuck down! _He had called the others from New York, leaving messages for Dom, Eames, and Yusuf, but he'd been afraid to call Ariadne, lest he give her away in his attempt to warn her. Dom would call Miles, Miles would know what to do, and they would make sure Ariadne was safe until he got there, but still, it ate at Arthur. He wished he could have, at the very least, heard her voice on the other end of the line (he was finding himself, again, horrified at his own emotional irrationality when it came to Ariadne. He made another mental note to be wary of that in himself).

In Barcelona, he bought a train ticket to Madrid and forced himself to ride all the way to Zargoza (just in case he was still being followed), where he ducked off the train, quietly, rented a car, and drove back toward the French border. The trip was excruciatingly long, even though he'd thought to download a few audiobooks—_The Brothers Karamazov, The Road_, _Into the Wild_. He found it difficult to focus on the story over his continual mental litany of anxiety, and eventually gave up, listening instead to the sound of the wheels on the road (not fast enough). In consideration of the fact that he'd been awake for thirty-six hours and was functioning on adrenaline, airline food, and a stale bagel, he stopped reluctantly in Figueres to pick up food and coffee, spurred by his own anxiety to commit what he considered, under normal circumstances, a serious faux-pas, and eat in the car (this was one of the sole instances where he and Eames, for once, agreed. Dom, on the other hand, had been known to attempt to get in Arthur's car with various and sundry messy food items: hamburgers and fries, hotdogs, or, once, to Arthur's horrified astonishment, an ice cream sundae, complete with multiple scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, nuts, and three maraschino cherries. They'd made him leave it on the curb. Dom had retaliated by populating the dreamscape for weeks, during their inter-job training sessions, with ice cream trucks. If Arthur didn't hear another rendition of _Pop Goes The Weasel_ until hell froze over, it would be too soon).

As he navigated through the city, he passed the bizarrely-extravagant _Teatre-Museu Dalí_, bright even in the watery winter sunlight, unlikely eggs perched atop its pink ramparts. Underneath the constant current of anxiety, in the very small portion of his mind that he allotted for such things, Arthur fancied that one day, perhaps, he could bring Ariadne back to visit—he had an inkling she'd like Dalí. The thought was accompanied by a sudden flash of memory: Ariadne standing at the edge of the table in Monmartre, face bright with surprise and pleasure as she looked over the breakfast spread and turned toward him to ask, "_You did this—all of this—for me?_". She was so young, so brilliant, so unsullied. So vulnerable. The warmth of the memory quickly turned to cold dread, twisting his gut. He frowned deeper and pressed the accelerator toward the floor.


End file.
